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fHE OPEN DOOR 



THE SECRET OF JESUS 



KEY TO SPIRITUAL EMANCIPATION, ILLUMINATION. AND MASTERY 



JOHN HAMLIN DEWEY, M.D. 

rHOR OF THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY SERIES — "THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND 
THE LIFE," "THE PATHWAY OF THE SPIRIT," ETC. 



" I am the door : by me if an)' man enter in, he shall 
be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." 



NEW YORK 
MTED STATES BOOK COMPANY 

150 WORTH ST., COR. MISSION PLACE 



/ 
THE OPEN DOOE 



OR 



THE SECRET OF JESUS 



A KEY TO SPIRITUAL EMANCIPATION, ILLUMINATION, AND MASTERY 



BY / 
if 



JOHN HAMLIN "DEWEY, M.D. 

M 

AUTHOR OP THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY SERIES— "THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND 

THE LIFE," " THE PATHWAY OF THE SPIRIT," ETC. 



"I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall 
be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." 

—Jesus, the Christ 



NEW YORK 
UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 

142 TO 150 WORTH STREET 






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Copyright, 1891, by 
J. H. DEWEY, M.D. 



All rights reserved 



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PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, 

NEW fORK. 






TO THOSE WHO 

LOOK, PRAY, AND WORK 

FOR THE 

SPIRITUAL EMANCIPATION AND TRANSFIGURATION 

OF HUMANITY 

THESE WORDS ARE LOVINGLY SPOKEN, BY 

THE AUTHOR 



nTTEODUOTOET. 



Foue thousand years ago a prophet affirmed, " There / 
is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty i 
giveth them understanding." 

This has been the essential testimony of the seers and 
prophets of every age. The oracular exposition in the 
following pages of the divine possibilities of humanity 
is based upon the recognition of a psychic and spiritual 
side to both nature and man, whicli^ives to the mind a 
sphere of activity entirely above the plane and indepen- 
dent of the physical senses. This recognition is based 
upon the fact that occult and purely psychic and spirit- 
ual experiences have come to men in all ages, including 
our own, independent of sense impressions and visible 
causes. No reference is here made to objective appari- 
tions or other supposed manifestations of disembodied 
spirits to the physical senses ; but specifically to the ex- 
hibition of seership, prophetic insight, spiritual inspi- 
ration and all those phases of experience which involve 
the exercise of the mind's powers above the plane and 
independent of the five senses. 

No unbiassed student of history or of our own time 
will dispute the fact of these experiences, regard them 
how he may. Every age and people characterized by 



VI INTRODUCTORY. 

any degree of enlightenment have had their oracles, 
seers and prophets. No great religion has been estab- 
lished without them. However much of credulity, hal- 
lucination, superstition, and fanaticism may have min- 
gled in these experiences, genuine seership, inspiration, 
I prophecy, and the independent super-sensuous sphere of / 
the minds action have been demonstrated beyond all 
question. 

The significance of these facts has not been sufficiently 
appreciated, nor have the nature and conditions of this 
higher and independent sphere of mental action re- 
ceived that attention and practical study which their 
importance demands. The recent formation of a " Psy- 
chical Research Society " in England and America, for 
the collection and classification of authentic instances of 
psychic experience and occult phenomena for analytical 
and practical examination, is a step that is destined to 
ultimate in the mightiest intellectual upheaval and revo- 
lution our world has known. 

Let the full significance and bearing of these excep- 
tional experiences once be realized, and the law of their 
development generally understood, the idols of supersti- 
tion and the despotic power of ecclesiasticism on the one 
hand and the blank negations of a materialistic agnos- 
ticism on the other will be shattered and dispersed for- 
ever. It is because they have not been practically con- 
idered and understood that they have been made the 
basis of a superstitious reverence for supposed supernat- 
ural manifestations, and for the priestly assumption of a 
divine favoritism on the one hand, or that they have 
been associated with the study and practice of magic, 



INTRODUCTORY. Vll 

sorcery, and diabolism on the other. In themselves, 
when practically considered, they furnish no basis or ev- 
idence of divine favoritism, diabolism, or supernatural 
intervention. 

In recognizing a super-sensuous and spiritual realm to 
which we are related, we must reckon it as a portion of 
the universe to which we belong, and our relations to it 
and its influence upon us as perfectly natural and legiti- 
mate under normal conditions. The universe, including 
the realm of the spiritual, is one united system of inter- 
acting forces, governed by invariable laws which secure 
universal order and harmony. Each plane of activity, 
however, is governed by its own laws, the higher every, 
where overruling and modifying the lower, from the 
mineral kingdom to man, and from the plane of the hu- 
man to the sphere of the Divine. The evolution and or- 
ganic development of advancing orders of life would be 
impossible without this ; and if all these processes are 
the manifestation of a divine activity and purpose in 
creation and providence, then God, in His relations to 
nature and man, is the most absolutely natural Being in 
existence. 

Supernaturalism, then, in a system of universal order 
and relations, whether ruled by one supreme intelli- 
gence, or by a universal law of equilibrium and har- 
mony, is a misnomer. "Whatever occurs is in obedience : 
to law and in harmony with universal order, but in a 
system of rising gradations and progressively unfolding 
orders and advancing planes of life, each plane of activ- 
ity, to be understood, must be studied under its own 
laws. 



Ylll INTRODUCTORY. 

The lower kingdoms and all the activities of the phys- 
ical world and its occult forces have culminated in man, 
making of him a Microcosm, a focalized and embodied 
germ of all that the universe contains. He is, therefore, 
the starting-point of a new departure or cycle of evolu- 
tion in which the Macrocosm is to be reproduced, and 
find organic expression in and through the unfolding 
powers of his germinal life, but on the higher planes of 
his psychic and spiritual being; albeit their primary 
development is in a physical organism. 

The super-sensuous activities of mind in a portion of 
our race but indicate the latent powers of all ; hence in 
these exceptional experiences and latent powers are hid- 
den the most stupendous possibilities of our marvel- 
lous, compiex, and microcosmic nature. 

This latent power of independent mental action, or ac- 
tion on interior and higher psychic and spiritual planes, 
is as capable of normal development and exercise and is 
as legitimate under proper conditions, as is the mind's 
action on the plane and under the limitations of the 
physical senses. 

The higher planes of mental action, opened in greater 
or less degree to a few, reveal and demonstrate the 
existence of other and finer senses of a psychic and 
spiritual character inherent in the nature of man, though 
Latent as yet in the masses. 

These inner senses, then, relate man interiorly first, to 
occult and psychic side or " soul of things," includ- 
ing the realm of the departed or soul -world ; and second, 
to the still deeper and inmost, the transcendent sphere 
of the Impersonal and Divine, the realm of Absolute 



INTRODUCTORY. IX 

Being, the kingdom of God, the nature of which man in 
his own divine inmost partakes. That which opens man 
to the occult or inner side and soul of personalities and 
things, we call the sixth, psychic or psychometric sense. 
That which opens him to the inmost sphere of the Divine, 
Impersonal, and Absolute, the touch and influx or 
inspiration of God, we call the seventh or spiritual and 
God-sense. If this distinction between the psychic 
sphere of personalities and things, to which man is 
related and opened by the sixth sense, and the purely 
spiritual sphere of the Divine and Impersonal or king- 
dom of God, to which he is related and opened by the 
seventh and God-sense, is kept clearly in mind, all con- 
fusion concerning the nature and character of inspira- 
tion will be avoided. 

It will readily be seen that through the cultivation 
and activity of the sixth sense, under the law of transfer- 
ence of thought, the mind may receive an influx of in- 
telligence from, and be directly influenced by the 
thoughts and mental states of other personalities with 
whom it may be in sympathetic relations, whether in the 
body or out. In this phase and quality of inspiration, 
there is of necessity the deflection and limitation of a 
personal bias. Such is the inspiration of all genuine 
mediumship, the quality of which depends upon the class 
or grade of intelligences with which the medium may 
be in sympathetic communication, and this depends 
largely upon the character, mental development and 
moral state. 

The soul, however, that is opened through its own 
divine inmost to the conscious touch or vibration of and 



X INTRODUCTORY. 

sympathetic unity with the Divine and Impersonal, is 
lifted thereby out of and above the sphere of self, into 
the sense of the universal, the divine sphere of impersonal 
and impartial sympathy and justice, and is thus enabled 
to recognize and love the truth and the right for their 
own sake, independent of all bias of personal considera- 
tion or preference. 

All inspiration from the sphere of personalities has, 
we repeat, the deflection of personal bias ; hence inspira- 
tion directly from the sphere of the Divine is the only 
power that can lift man into the impersonal and perfect 
attitude of truth and righteousness toward all questions 
and things, and give him the real mastery over them. 

Spiritists and all who suppose that God inspires men 
only through the intermediate ministry of angels and 
spirits, and that immediate inspiration from Him is im- 
possible, make this mistake, they recognize and cultivate 
only the sixth sense and practically shut themselves 
against the opening and activity of the seventh, which 
alone can lift them to the mastery, freedom, and illumina- 
tion of the perfect life. 

All who come into conscious unity with the Divine are 
lifted thereby into royal fellowship and communion also 
with those who dwell and walk in the perfect life of unity 
with God ; but those who seek angelic communion as an 
end and confound the Holy Spirit referred to by Jesus 
with the influence of spirits, practically put spirits above 
God in their thought and desire, and so shut themselves 
out from the sphere of Divine communion and fellow- 
ship ; and in their worship of angels and ancestral 
spirits, and intermediary gods, become idolators. / They 



INTRODUCTORY. XI 

forget that God is the inmost life of all men and things, 
and is therefore as open and free of access to the hum- 
blest soul as to the most exalted. j 

God is to be found within, not without, man. What 
access, then, can spirits out of the body have to God, which 
is not equally open to spirits in the body ? It is highly 
important that this distinction should be kept clearly in 
mind by all who would attain the perfect life of spiritual 
freedom and supremacy in the flesh. "With this key, the 
exposition of the following pages will be more clearly 
understood and its practical help appreciated. 

That angels have ministered in the name of God to 
men there need be no question. The inspired Stephen 
affirmed that the Jewish or Old Testament dispensation 
was through " the disposition of angels " (Acts vii. 53) ; 
and that the voice which spake to Moses from the burn- 
ing bush in the name of God, was " an angel of the Lord " 
(Acts vii. 30). All special providences and answers to 
prayer that require the operation of special agencies ex- 
ternal to the soul must come through the ministry of 
messengers, and these are angels of God, whether in or 
out of the body ; but the prayer must be to God, not to 
the messenger. 

It is a question if this discrimination was clear to 
many of the earlier prophets. Jesus was probably the 
first to draw the line of discrimination clearly, and make 
the distinction positive between the inspiration from 
spirits in and through mediumship, and the immediate 
inspiration from God. 

Jesus unmistakably recognized the mediumship of 
John the Baptist, who " came in the spirit and power of 






Xll INTRODUCTORY. 

Elias." That is, that he came under the immediate 
personal influence and control of the old prophet, voic- 
ing* his message. "And if ye will receive [understand] 
it, this is Elias, which was for to come " (Matt. xi. 14). 

It had been prophesied, as quoted by Jesus (Matt. xi. 
10), that the spirit of Elijah, one of the mightiest of the 
Hebrew prophets, should return to earth immediately 
preceding the long-promised Messiah, and prepare the 
way for his advent. The work of the great forerunner 
was special, local, and preparatory ; while the work of 
him that was to follow was to be universal and final, in 
opening the door of immediate access to God and the 
perfect life of divine communion and fellowship unto all 
men, in the full realization of divine sonship and broth- 
erhood. 

This return of an old prophet to perform some needed 
and special work for men, in and through the medium - 

thip of a well-qualified and chosen instrument, illus- 
rates the true secret of all so-called re-incarnation of 
" Avatars," etc. This blending of the personal sphere of 
a spirit with the personal sphere of a man in the body, 
the will, intelligence and personality of the spirit domi- 
nating the personality, intelligence, and will of the 
man, as in the mediumship of spirit control, is, when 
permanently maintained for a lengthened period for a 
definite end, the only kind of reincarnation possible to 
a departed spirit. This when not in the divine order 
and for some wise purpose, becomes obsession. There 
is no doubt a large per cent, of insanity caused by this 
disorderly and unfortunate blending of personal spheres. 
The better phases of orderly mediumship may still be 



INTRODUCTORY. Xlll 

admissible, and possibly a necessity, to an age sub- 
merged in materialism like our own, to convince men of 
their continued existence as spirits beyond the dissolu- 
tion of the body, in a world where they will reap the 
fruit of their sowing in this, and thus call attention to 
their higher nature which this fact involves; but in 
opening up the new and higher spiritual life to men 
through the Christ ideal and method, there will be no 
further need or place even for this. 

Mediumship when perverted, as it too generally is to- 
day, to the materialization of spirits, and pandering to 
the sensuous life, instead of the spiritualization of the 
men and women who seek it, becomes a source of degra- 
dation and moral defilement. To call such spiritism 
identical with primitive Christianity, as is often done by 
its adherents, but illustrates the pitiable depths of 
moral obliquity and darkness to which it plunges its 
followers. 

The illumination of humanity through the opening of 
the spiritual consciousness and development of the 
higher psychic powers under divine inspiration, will 
open the true and safe door of communion with the de- 
parted, in independent seership, in which the seer does 
not come under the intrusive wills and controlling domi- 
nance of other personalities, as in the ordinary phases of 
mediumship. 

"While Jesus recognized the mediumship of John, than 
whom " no greater had risen among men," he also at the 
same time emphasized this distinction between the in- 
spiration of the Old Dispensation under " the disposi- 
tion of angels " through mediumship, and the New and 



XIV INTRODUCTORY. 

higher Dispensation of the Spirit under the immediate 
inspiration of the All-Father. 

All high prophecy had pointed to the coming of that 
which should be perfect, " the kingdom of heaven " or 
the perfect life on earth. This, the Christ affirmed, had 
been " prophesied until John." When, therefore, he 
confessed that no greater prophet had risen among men 
than John the Baptist, he also affirmed that " he that is 
least in the kingdom of God, is greater than he." In 
other words, he that is opened to immediate inspiration 
from God, and to conscious communion, and fellow- 
ship with Him as Father, has entered upon a career in- 
finitely above and beyond the possibilities of medium- 
ship, whatever the character and plane of the controlling 
intelligence. 

Making this starting-point the inauguration of a new 
and higher life of illumination, freedom, and achievement 
for man, was the specific yet universal work of the Christ. 

The true destiny and highest attainment possible to 
any and every man is the unfolding and bringing to 
perfection the divine nature in his own being, as the 
child of God, not to be the automaton and mouth-piece 
of other personalities. No perfect action and mastery is 
possible, therefore, either on the plane of the physical 
senses, or on the higher and psychic plane of the sixth 
sense, until the sphere of the Divine and Impersonal is 
oi»( ned consciously to the soul through the quickening 
and activity of the seventh or God-sense, and the entire 
man is thus co-ordinated with his own divine inmost, en- 
throned in the activity of its rightful supremacy under 
the immediate illumination of God. 



INTKODUCTOKY. XV 

Man's consciousness and knowledge of the outward 
world and of external things are attained only by the 
mind's activity in contact with them in and through the 
five physical senses. So consciousness of his own tran- 
scendent nature and powers as a spiritual being, and 
child of God, and his immediate knowledge of spiritual 
things and divine states of being, are attained only by a 
corresponding contact, or conscious communion and fel- 
lowship with the Divine and Perfect in and through the 
inmost and spiritual or God-sense. 

The psychic powers of the sixth sense, awakened under 
the inspiration and enlightenment of the Divine Omnisci- 
ence, find their specific field of activity and achievement 
in the realm of the occult, within the sphere of personali- 
ties and things, through which man is to attain the 
mastery of himself, his environment, and the world. 

This book is not presented, however, as a scientific 
study, as such, of these inner and finer senses, psychic 
powers, and higher planes of mental action, but as the 
testimony of one who has experienced in some degree 
their reality. It is an earnest effort from the stand-point 
of a seer, to become a help not an oracle for others, and 
to so unfold the law and conditions through which the 
spiritual consciousness is attained and the emancipation 
of mind realized, in the development and exercise of the 
psychic powers under divine inspiration, that the truth 
thereof may be practically and readily tested by all who 
desire to know it for themselves. This method of 
demonstration is practical and within reach of all, and 
is really the only kind of demonstration needed. 

If as we claim, man holds these specific organic rela- 






XVI INTRODUCTORY. 



tions to the occult and psychic realm or inner side of 
things, and to the still deeper, inmost and transcendent 
sphere of the Divine, Impersonal and Absolute, then 
the inner senses which so relate him to them are an or- 
ganic necessity. As such they may and should be awak- 
ened and the normal consciousness of these relations 
established as perfectly through their activity, as his 
consciousness of the external world and of his relations 
thereto has been established through the activity of the 
physical senses. 

These innate powers on which the higher consciousness 
must be based, have indeed been partially awakened in 
vast numbers through the religious efforts of men in 
seeking after some realization of God, because the high- 
er planes of being to which these powers relate man, 
impinge upon his soul. A few only, however, have 
reached the clear consciousness of these relations and 
attained thereby the full supremacy and realization of 
spiritual being in the flesh. "We have in the Christ the 
one supreme and perfect example of this divine realiza- 
tion, and so the perfect type and model for all. Never- 
theless the partially awakened masses, not understanding 
their own condition, nor recognizing or appreciating their 
higher possibilities, have been held in darkness by the 
misleading interpretations of equally blind leaders. It 
IS hoped that the following pages will bring to such a 
new light and courage and open the door of spiritual 
emancipation and deliverance to many. 

In passing, we would simply call attention to the occult 
and innate power of the sixth sense, called Psychometry, 
as the basis of intuition and of all the higher psychic 



INTRODUCTORY. XV11 

powers and " spiritual gifts." This power is inherent in 
the nature of man, and will be fully awakened in all 
through the attainment of the spiritual consciousness. 
Its partial awakening is manifest in those " first impres- 
sions " which so many have, independent of and often in 
opposition to the judgment based upon external ap- 
pearance. 

These first impressions, when understood and properly 
observed and cultivated, become an unerring intuition, 
and as safe a guide to man as instinct is to the animal. 
A few have caught an appreciative glimpse of the mighty 
sweep of this power in its perfected activity, and by its 
cultivation have attained a high degree of practical 
realization in daily experience. 

Psychometry, as the name implies, is the " soul measur- 
ing power," the psychic power of entering into mental 
contact and sympathy with the inner life of men and 
things and perceiving accurately their essential char- 
acter, conditions, and history, independent of all external 
sources of information. In its fuller sweep of action the 
mind is enabled to penetrate with unclouded vision and 
unerring intuition the secret processes of nature and life, 
and thus solve in a flash of omniscient light the most 
occult and abstruse questions. At times, also, the 
prophetic vision is opened, the womb of the future un- 
sealed, and dramas of coming events, near or far, are un- 
rolled to the prescience of the seer. Another phase of 
its higher activities is intromission into the spiritual 
world, in which the soul is enabled to mingle in heav- 
enly societies, and witness celestial scenes of beatific 
blessedness which no language or symbols of earth can 



XV111 INTRODUCTORY. 

portray. These high powers and others, are latent and 
awaiting- development in every human soul through the 
opening of the inner senses and spiritual consciousness, 
and are possible to all who truly desire it. 

The constitution of man is essentially the same the 
world over. No one soul possesses powers not pos- 
sessed in some degree by every other ; and no power is 
possessed by man which was not meant for use, and 
which, therefore, may not be cultivated and exercised to 
the ends for which it was given. The Lord Christ as- 
sured his followers that in his illumination and experi- 
ence he but exemplified the innate possibilities of all ; 
and promised all who should believe his word and follow 
his instruction, that they should have a like illumination 
and do the works he did and even greater. 

Inspiration, seership, prophecy, etc., are not, we re- 
peat, the exclusive gifts or privilege of any favored class, 
nationality, or time, but are the inherent birthright of all 
men. Accepted examples of these high gifts have ex- 
isted among all people, and constitute the illuminati of 
our common humanity, revealing the possibilities slum- 
bering potentially in all. 

Among the illuminati have been souls of exceptional 
genius, inspiration, and power, who have exerted an in- 
calculable influence for good in lifting up loftier ideals 
and quickening the nobler aspirations of the race. 

Prophets in every age have had unmistakable fore- 
gleams of a vastly higher and grander life for man on 
earth, and in one accord have proclaimed with the au- 
thority of a divine prescience, a coming time of univer- 
sal enlightenment, freedom, peace and blessedness, to be 



INTRODUCTORY. XIX 

attained by man through the unfoldment of his inherent 
powers of intuition, inspiration, and spiritual supremacy 
as a son of God. 

This inherent power of mental action above the plane 
and independent of the physical senses, when brought 
into activity under divine inspiration is the only power 
and process which can and will emancipate the soul from 
the thraldom and limitations of flesh and sense while in 
the body, and bring these into subjection to and co-or- 
dination with the law and illumination of the Spirit in 
the personal life. The simple process by which this 
transformation is effected in one will do the same for all. 
This, and this only will regenerate the individual and 
the race and enthrone the kingdom of God, which is 
love, harmony, and perfection, in the life and society of 
earth as in heaven. 

This door of entrance to the kingdom of God was the 
true secret of Jesus, which, opened and demonstrated in 
his own experience, made him the Christ or Divinely 
Anointed Leader of his race. We do not necessarily ig- 
nore nor depreciate the inspiration and service of Bud- 
dha, Confucius, Zoroaster, nor the still more ancient nor 
later illuminati, in recognizing in Jesus the Divine Gal- 
ilean, a perfection of illumination and spiritual power 
which overshadows them all. 

All of true spiritual realization and practical attain- 
ment conceived of and sought for by them was certainly 
reached in its fulness by him. All of occult insight and 
mastery sought for by alchemist and magician were 
practically possessed by him as a result of his spiritual 
illumination and attainment. 



XX INTRODUCTORY. 

The Apostles and their immediate followers also to a 
large degree entered into this secret of the Master and 
realized its power, as manifest in the triumphs and mar- 
vels of the Apostolic church. 

In the rise of ecclesiasticism, however, which followed 
that age, this secret of the Christ was lost to the Church 
which no longer remained the custodian of its power. 

When the Church ignored a living, universal, and per- 
petual inspiration, and set up in its stead the interpret- 
ing ministry of an authoritative priesthood, the light and 
gifts of the Spirit went out upon her altars ; the priest 
took the place of the prophet, and priest and people 
alike sank into the blindness and darkness of a sensuous 
and idolatrous worship. 

There have been nevertheless a small minority of in- 
dependent souls scattered through the centuries, both in 
and out of the Church, who, turning from ecclesiastical 
authority and traditional dogmas to the original gospel 
of the Christ, caught its secret and in their consecrated 
and inspired lives bore witness to its power. The 
Church, as a bulwark of traditional dogmas and the 
superstitions of darker ages, has had its day. The 
general reaction which has now set in against the 
fictitious authority of tradition is destined to spread, and 
in its destructive path to shatter the hoary idols and 
strongholds of antiquated error and clear the way for the 
incoming light and better life of a new day and spiritual 
era for mankind. This reaction is not based so much 
upon a materialistic agnosticism as upon the upspring- 
ing spiritual instincts and aspirations of men which find 
no satisfying food in the common Church teaching. 



INTRODUCTORY. XXI 

When one arises in the modern pulpit with a really 
new and fresh inspiration, and boldly delivers his mes- 
sage, crowds of yearning, hungry souls flock to hear and 
listen to his words. 

Among the many voices lifted up to proclaim the 
dawning of a better day and speed its coming, this 
earnest word is sent forth not to attack the Church per se, 
but to help interpret anew the message of the Christ, and 
restore the secret of the mighty life realized by him, and 
by him promised to his followers. 

Speaking as a seer, we know and unhesitatingly affirm 
that the power of an unerring intuition and the capacity 
for divine inspiration and communion are inherent in 
every human soul. We know that spiritual emancipation 
and a high degree of illumination are possible of realiza- 
tion here and now by all who have attained to the con- 
ditions of civilized life. We know from personal experi- 
ence and the helping of many into light and freedom 
that the method is effective and universally practicable/ 
We are morally certain that the Apostolic attainment 
.may and would be realized in universal experience to- 
day, by a return to the simple and direct faith and 
method of the Christ, so faithfully acted upon by his 
early followers. 

The Christ told men they were children of God, and 
through loyalty to that divine relationship they should 
become perfect as their heavenly Father was perfect. 
The great Apostle to the Gentiles said, " The Spirit 
beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of 
God ; and if children then heirs ; heirs of God and joint 
heirs with Christ." 






XX11 INTRODUCTORY. 

Teach men that they have no capacity for spiritual in- 
spiration and the realization of the perfect life on earth, 
and they will put forth no adequate effort to attain them. 
This lias been the practical teaching of the Church for 
about seventeen centuries. Assure men, on the other 
hand, that the Deific attributes of the Eternal Father are 
potentially within them, and may be brought forth to full 
fruition of the perfect life here and now, by personal co- 
operation with the Father's Spirit, and they may be 
aroused to the proper effort for its realization. 

This was the simple but sublime gospel of the Christ ; 
and to day, as when first announced, " it is the power 
of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." The 
salvation it promises is the attainment and security of a 
life above the power of contagion and disease, as above 
the power of temptation and sin. A life guided by the 
higher wisdom of an unerring intuition, and governed by 
the inspiration of an impartial and all-embracing love and 
sympathy. It is the realization of the perfect life of a 
son of God in oneness with the Father's Spirit. But 
when shall men commence the specific effort for its 
immediate possession ? Shall it be in this generation, 
here, to-day, or some future age ? When will the time be 
more favorable than now ? 

If it were a matter of intellectual development and 
general progress only, there might be some reason for 
poning the millennium to some future time ; but it 
is not. There is already sufficient intellectual develop- 
ment and progress in general. These are to be supple- 
mented and the desired change and transformation effected 
by the specific application of a higher law and principle. 



INTR0DU CTOR Y. XXlll 

The world is ripe and ready for the starting of a new 
and higher order and cycle of evolution and progress, 
which in the order of an all-wise and beneficent Provi- 
dence is left for man, in the exercise of his freedom of 
choice and volition, to inaugurate. Nineteen centuries 
ago the Christ announced the time as fulfilled and the 
kingdom of God as at hand, or within reach of human 
effort. That the words of this book may lift many to the 
mount of vision to behold the nearness of the kingdom, 
and inspire them with boldness and courage to enter in 
and possess its treasures, is the prayer of 



THE AUTHOB. 



•854 West Fifty-sixth Street, 

New York, January, 1891. 






PART I. 

THE THEOSOPHY OF THE CHRIST DEFINED, DIFFER- 
ENTIATED, AND PRACTICALLY APPLIED. 



I am the door : by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go 
in and out, and find pasture. 

I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. 

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me : 

And I give unto them eternal life ; and they shall never perish, neither 
shall any man pluck them out of my hand. 

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more 
abundantly. 

And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold : them also I must 
bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and there shall be one fold, and one 
shepherd. 

I am the light of the world : he that followeth me shall not walk in dark- 
ness, but shall have the light of life. 

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I 
do shall he do also ; and greater than these shall he do ; because I go unto the 
Father.— Jesus the Christ. 



THE OPEN DOOR. 



THE CHEISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 

Theo-Sophia. — Divine Wisdom. — A distinguished au- 
thority in modern scientific philosophy affirms that 
" amid the mysteries that become the more mysterious 
the more they are thought about there will remain the 
one absolute certainty, that we are ever in the presence 
of an infinite and an eternal energy from which all things 
proceed." 

The certainty of " an infinite and eternal energy from 
which all things proceed " renders it equally certain that, 
whatever the nature and character of that original some- 
thing may be, it must forever remain the one supreme 
factor in the universe of being and of becoming. 

This original and infinite causative fount or spring of 
life, power, intelligence and goodness, men have ever in- 
tuitively personified and called God. 

The purest and most exalted conception of the nature 
and character of God ever reached by the mind of man 
was formulated by Jesus when he said : " God is Spirit ; 
and they that worship him [recognize, love and adore] 
must worship in spirit and truth : for the Father seeketh 
such to worship him." 



4 THE OPEN DOOR. 

In this conception or understanding, God as Spirit is 
recognized not only as the animating principle or uni- 
versal life-force of nature, but as Absolute Being, both 
immanent and transcendent; infinite in wisdom and 
goodness, power and providence ; " our Father in hea- 
ven," whose name should be hallowed to the thought and 
affection of all men as His children. 

Theoretically, Theosophy is God-knowledge, or wise 
in the things of God. Practically defined, Theosophy is 
the understanding which men have of God in His rela- 
tion to nature and man, and of man in his relation to 
God and to nature. 

This understanding may be enlightened and perfect, 
or confused and imperfect. In either case it will exert 
a corresponding influence upon the personal life and 
character, and constitute the real basis of the individual 
faith and effort. 

When perfect, it gives that practical wisdom which en- 
ables its possessor to so adjust himself to these relations 
that he shall live the true integral life, and thus nor- 
mally unfold and increase in wisdom and power until 
he attain the perfect state of spiritual freedom, illumi- 
nation and blessedness. 

The perfect adjustment of man to all his relations is 
possible, therefore, only through the recognition of and 
conformity with the central co-ordinating law of his be- 
ing, which secures its integral harmony and perfection. 
That co-ordinating law is the law of his moral and spirit- 
ual relation to God as the child of His love and provi- 
dence — the supreme law of his moral nature and spiritual 
life. 



THE CHRISTIAN THE0S0PHY. 5 

This supremacy and co-ordinating power of the spirit- 
ual nature in man, when maintained, by securing the 
integral harmony of his own being adjusts him to the 
harmony of universal being, and makes him one with the 
divine order and economy. Being at one with God in 
his personal life, he is at one with Him in his per- 
sonal relations with men, with Nature and his environ- 
ments ; achieving and holding his personal supremacy 
in and over these relations by his unity with God in 
them. 

This final adjustment of the personal life of man to 
the divine order and government — the kingdom of 
God — through the permanent supremacy of the spiritual 
nature, secures divine illumination, and gives him con- 
trol, first of himself — the functions and powers of his 
own being — then of his environment, and ultimately of 
the forces of life and of death, making him practically 
master of the world. 

Such is the sublime possibility of man through per- 
sonal unity in spirit and purpose with God in all the re- 
lations of life and being. Unity of man in thought and 
will with the Divine Spirit, brings consciousness of God's 
unity with man in his personal activities and achieve- 
ments. 

Perfect conformity with the law of universal harmony, 
and so with the divine supremacy of being, makes man 
one with the law, and the law with him in that suprem- 
acy. He thus becomes the law incarnate, and so a law 
unto himself. This gives him the freedom of the uni- 
verse ; since the spontaneous activities of his being are 
henceforth one with the divine supremacy in the uni- 



6 TIIE OPEN DOOR. 

versal order and harmony. This supreme attainment is 
the sublime aim of Theosophy. 

Intuition. — Spiritual supremacy and illumination give 
the interior vision and direct insight into the properties 
and conditions of all things upon which the attention 
and legitimate desires are centred. This is intuition, or 
the grasping of knowledge at first hand, independent of 
external sources of information. Its perfected action 
embraces the immediate perception of the secret pro- 
cesses of nature and life in any specific field to which 
the attention is directed. "For there is nothing covered 
that shall not be revealed ; neither hid that shall not be 
known." This gives corresponding ability to control and 
direct the occult forces to the full extent of the exact 
knowledge, thus acquired, of their nature and range of 
action. 

As already intimated, there are degrees of attainment 
in this esoteric insight and wisdom, and according to the 
degree reached by each soul and corresponding adjust- 
ment of its activities to the divine law will be the com- 
pleteness of results in personal experience. 

The search for esoteric knowledge and wisdom in the 
supreme desire for spiritual realization, or unity with 
God and man in the harmony and supremacy of being, 
has given to Theosophy the name also of " The Wisdom 
Religion. " 

Christian Theosophy Differentiated. — The perfect 
understanding of the nature of God and man, and of 
the law of divine attainment and realization, was first 
reached and practically demonstrated in personal ex- 
perience — in the flesh — by Jesus, which made him the 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 7 

Christ. Having first been attained and opened in its 
fulness to the world by Jesus as "the Christ," it is 
very properly termed The Christian Theosophy. 

What before were but prophetic glimpses, partial illu- 
minations, and incomplete experiences, attained through 
the inspired efforts of the seers, sages, and prophets of 
other times and peoples, were brought to perfection and 
fulfilled in him. 

The full correlated truth concerning the nature and 
relations of God and the human soul, unperverted by 
sensuous misconceptions and misguided speculation, in 
the undimmed splendor of complete illumination, had 
not been reached by any seer prior to Jesus. If so, the 
evidence of it has not been preserved to us in the sacred 
literature of the world's great religions. 

A high degree of enlightenment had come to many, 
and each great seer or prophet had grasped and empha- 
sized some special principle of truth, which, without its 
correlation with other principles equally essential, would 
necessarily be misleading and give rise to misguided 
speculation. 

Perfect illumination only can give the unbiassed per- 
ception of the full rounded truth in its correlated har- 
mony, beauty and power, and this we claim was first 
attained and demonstrated in personal experience by 
Jesus, the Christ. 

Every essential principle involved in the conceptions 
and spiritual experiences of those who had preceded 
him, was fully embraced and held in its true relations in 
I is full-orbed concept and perfect Theosophy. 

And because, in the order of Providence, he was the 



8 THE OPEN DOOR. 

first to attain the perfect life of divine illumination and 
spiritual supremacy in the flesh, he was justly called 
" the Christ," or God Anointed. 

He became in the fullest sense " the sent of God." He 
came, therefore, not to destroy or supersede the law and 
the prophets, but to bring their spirit and purpose to 
full fruition and perfection in the universal experience 
of mankind. Having done this for himself as a repre- 
sentative man, he had demonstrated its possibility for 
all his race. 

Having both by precept and example disclosed and 
demonstrated the perfect way of attainment for all, he 
completed the victorious life of spiritual supremacy by 
entering the shadow of death itself, to dispel its gloom 
and break its power over the thought and life of man. 
Wresting his body from the grasp of death and rising 
from the tomb he opened a pathway to the higher realms 
of light and blessedness, without death, through a glori- 
ous translation. 

High prophecy declares that " the last enemy that 
shall be destroyed is death. . . . For this corrupti 
ble must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put 
on immortality. So, when this corruptible shall have 
put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on 
immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is 
written, Death is swallowed up in victory." 

The Lord Christ on putting the last enemy under his 
feet ascended to his throne of power and ministry in the 
spiritual heavens, where he henceforth lives to extend 
the help of his divine sympathy and ministration to all 
on earth or in the spheres, who truly seek to follow him. , 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 9 

Nor is he alone in this providential ministry of heaven 
to men. All who have lived, wrought and died for man, 
and risen into unity with Christ in the divine and per- 
fect life — " the spirits of just men made perfect " — are 
one with him in this heavenly ministration. This minis- 
try comes to earth " in His name " simply and justly 
because he was the first, and, as yet the only complete 
earthly realization and representative of the ideal life 
designed for man. 

Millions have received the help and realized the power 
of this gracious ministry led by the ascended and glo- 
rified Christ, whose living sympathy and undying love 
for men makes their interest on& with his, and his one 
with theirs. 

Whether the real nature and source of this help has 
ever been fully understood and appreciated since Apos- 
tolic times or not, it has never failed those who, whether 
blindly or intelligently, have opened themselves to it. 

From out the luminous depths of the spiritual sphere 
that encircles the indestructible soul-life of humanity, 
the Master speaks to the hearts of men, saying, " Behold, 
I stand at the door and knock ; if any man hear my voice 
and open the door, I 'will come in to him and will sup 
with him and he with me." 

In this utterance he speaks not for himself alone, but 
for the mighty Brotherhood of Spirit of which he is the 
living head and luminous centre. He speaks also for 
that ideal life on earth, once realized by him, which, 
through the faithful following of the great Captain, 
awaits the coronation of universal humanity. 

When this living perpetual ministry of the Christ-life 



10 THE OPEN DOOR. 

to men is truly understood, appreciated and co-operated 
with, its kindly help to needy souls will be vastly more 
immediate and effective. Universally applied, it will 
bring the Pentecostal baptism and power into universal 
experience. 

Knowledge which Saves. — "Knowledge is power." 
There is a knowledge that saves and a knowledge that 
net only does not save, but destroys. 

4 * We know the right and we approve it too ; 
We know the wrong and yet the wrong pursue.' ' 

"If ye continue in my words," said the Christ, "then 
shall ye be my disciples indeed $ and ye shall know the 
truth and the truth shall make you free." The knowledge 
which saves and brings to perfection is the experimental 
knowledge of God and of His Christ. " And this is life 
eternal, that they might know thee the only true God and 
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." 

To know and understand God as Jesus knew and un- 
derstood Him, is to experimentally know Him as " our 
Father in heaven," through loving loyalty to and com- 
munion with His Spirit. It is to know Him by " the wit- 
ness of the Spirit," His Spirit witnessing "with our 
spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then 
heirs; heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ." 

To know Jesus as the Christ or sent of God is to know 
him as the typical or model man, the divinely approved 
or representative Son of God and Brother of men, by 
rising into fellowship with him in the personal realiza- 
tion of the perfect life of divine Sonship and Brother- 
hood. 



THE CHEISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 11 

The experimental knowledge of God as Father and of 
the Christ as Brother, brings the personal realization of 
identity of nature with them, and enthrones the soul in 
the consciousness of spiritual supremacy and power. 

Jesus as the Christ, claimed nothing for himself that 
he did not assure the world was possible to all men, 
through fidelity to the law of spiritual attainment so 
divinely exemplified in himself. 

This sublime possibility for all men, he based upon 
the tremendous fact of their divine sonship and conse- 
quent divine heredity. The reality of this he had, as an 
illuminated Son of God and brother of men, demonstrat- 
ed in his own experience. 

In his personal exaltation as a member of the human 
race he could exemplify and demonstrate only the possi- 
bilities of our common humanity. Upon this sublime 
truth and supreme fact of experimental demonstration 
in himself, he laid the most positive and specific empha- 
sis of his teaching. " Yerily, verily I say unto you, he 
that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also ; 
and greater than these shall he do ; because I go unto the 
Father." 

Certitude of the Divine Possibility.— The first ques- 
tion that strikes a thinking mind on the presentation of 
this high claim and promise is, Is this ideal life of 
spiritual perfection and power represented in the story 
of the Christ, and by him promised to all his faithful fol- 
lowers, a mythical and delusive dream of romance, or is 
it indeed a possible reality ? 

If the story of the Christ, in its essential features, is 
an historic verity, then certainly the divine attainment 



12 THE OPEN DOOK. 

having been reached by one man and approximated 
by many, its possibility is practically demonstrated for 
all. 

AYlrile we may not absolutely demonstrate historically 
the truth or falsity of the gospel narrative — though the 
balance of evidence is on the side of its probable truth — 
if true, the Christ himself has left us the means of its 
demonstration in personal experience, viz.: the faithful 
following of his example and instruction. 

This verification in personal experience of the Christ 
promise was the practical evidence with which the Apos- 
tles substantiated their testimony of the transcendent 
life of their resurrected and ascended Lord. 

This evidence is equally available to us, and remains 
the only possible evidence of practical value and positive 
demonstration to our age. It is, indeed, the very demon- 
stration for which the age is waiting. 

The Christian Church since Apostolic times has not 
in any marked degree given this kind of evidence to the 
world, because, as we shall show, it has has not, and does 
not to-day, make this claim and promise the basis of its 
faith and effort. 

Speculative opinions and metaphysical reasonings, as 
such, are not demonstrations ; and have but little power 
over the life. 

The Christ resorted to no metaphysical reasonings or 
speculative methods to convince his followers of the 
truth of his teaching ; he demanded no arbitrary accept- 
ance of Ms word as authority. He simply urged them 
to test the truth of his teaching by the application of 
the principles and conditions he had opened to them, as- 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPIIY. 13^ 

suring them that they would thus find its demonstration 
in personal experience. 

" He spake/' it is true, " as one having* authority " and 
" his word was with power." It was, however, the au- 
thority of insight and experience, and the power of truth 
exemplified, as he stood before them the living illustra- 
tion of the gospel he was preaching. 

The true followers of Christ in every age, speaking 
and acting in his name and power must, and will, present 
the same living demonstration for their time, as did the 
Apostles in their day. This kind of evidence is, we re- 
peat, the practical demonstration for which the world is 
waiting, and which our age demands. 

The actual Christ and Apostolic life, and its final real- 
ization in universal experience, but fulfils the noblest 
aspirations of humanity, as expressed in the foregleams 
and prophetic visions of its illuminated seers and 
prophets since human history began. 

Assuming, then, the historic verity of the Christ life, 
and the trustworthiness of his teaching, we have a 
practical basis for their demonstration in personal ex- 
perience. Surely on so reasonable a basis, it is worth 
the while of every one to seriously examine and test the 
truth of this high claim and promise for himself. 

Basis of the Claim and Promise. — Under the Christ 
teaching every man is recognized as a son of God, and, 
therefore of necessity stands on an equality of privilege 
and opportunity before God with Jesus himself. 

Jesus having first attained the perfect life of personal 
adjustment with the divine order and government, and 
thus demonstrated the law of this adjustment — the law of 






14 THE OPEN DOOR. 

the perfect life and the perfect law of life — for all, be- 
came the Christ or God-anointed leader of men. From 
this high vantage-ground of prophetic insight and un- 
derstanding, he assures us that the same God-approved 
and illuminated life is open to all and attainable by all. 

To what else, indeed, could the Christ lead others but 
to that which he had himself attained. Every man, then, 
if a child of God as recognized by the Christ, is equally 
with him sent forth of the Father to do his own special 
work and achieve a destiny worthy of his divine parent- 
age and heredity. 

It will be hard for the mind biassed by the perverted 
traditional teaching, to accept this claim of equality for 
all men, in privilege and possibility with Jesus as the 
Christ. It is, nevertheless, the claim of the Lord Christ 
himself. 

"When he says to his followers, " Ye therefore shall be 
perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect," he bases that 
certain possibility upon the fact that God is their Father, 
and " therefore " they necessarily inherit this possibility 
as a divine heredity. 

This demand for the perfection of their being as sons of 
God covers all that was possible to him, even as " the 
Son of God," in which he w r as and could be exceptional 
only in being the model man and perfect type of divine 
sonship. 

As a divinely anointed teacher, he certainly would not 
demand of his followers anything beyond their power of 
attainment. That he claimed no relation with God as 
His Son, differing in any sense — save in degree of reali- 
zation — from that held by or possible to all men, is evi~ 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 15 

dent from his own positive utterance after his resurrec- 
tion and on the very eve of his ascension, giving this 
deliverance the importance and solemnity of last and final 
-words. " Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend 
unto my Father and your Father ; and to my God and 
your God." Nothing could be more explicit, specific, 
comprehensive and authoritative on this question than 
these final words of the risen Christ in the very hour of 
his departure. 

But One Divine Fatherhood. — There can be but one 
universal and Divine Fatherhood, and, therefore, but one 
relationship of that Fatherhood to men, and of men to 
each other as children of God. " Call no man your father 
upon the earth : for one is your Father, which is in 
heaven. Neither be ye called masters ; for one is your 
Master, even the Christ ; and all ye are brethren." 

The leadership of Jesus rests wholly upon the fact that 
he was the first of our race to enter into the full and per- 
fect life, in the realization of conscious union with God in 
the flesh. All others, therefore, who reach this state are 
necessarily his followers. 

By following him, however, others may, through this 
attainment, go forward to some higher achievement than 
was reached by him on earth, as he himself promised. 
' Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, 
the works that I do, shall he do also ; and greater than 
these shall he do, because I go unto the Father." 

The Key to this Attainment.— The astonished country- 
men, of Jesus on witnessing his marvellous power and in- 
sight, questioned among themselves, saying, "Whence 
hath this man this wisdom and these mighty works °i " 



16 THE OPEN DOOR. 

" How knoweth this man letters, having never learned ? " 
" Is not this the carpenter's son ? Is not his mother 
called Mary ? and his brethren James, and Joseph, and 
Simon, and Judas *? And his sisters, are they not all 
with us J Whence then hath this man all these things ? " 

Jesus, in answer to their perplexity, said unto them : 
" My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any 
man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, 
whether it be of God or whether I speak from myself." 
"I can of mine own self do nothing; as I hear, I judge: 
and my judgment is just ; because I seek not mine own 
will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." 

In these words the Lord Christ disclosed the secret of 
his attainment, and the immediate source of his excep- 
tional insight and power ; and at the same time assures 
us that through observance of the same law we may 
reach a like attainment and share with him his transcen- 
dent experience. 

Why Misunderstood. — At this statement the question 
naturally arises, why, then, was not this great assurance 
of the Christ more fully recognized and acted upon at 
the time 1 why has it not been since ? and why is it not 
today ? For the simple reason that men in every age 
are so blinded by the bias of traditional impressions, 
preconceived opinions, and fixed habits of thinking, that 
new conceptions involving an entire change of ideals and 
methods make but slight impression upon them, and 
thus are misapprehended and often grossly misinter- 
preted. 

For this reason the long habit of the Christian world 
regarding Jesus as in some way a supernatural be- 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 17 

ing, so that the humanity he took on was exceptional 
and therefore impossible of realization by any "mere 
man," though false to fact and to the claim of the 
Christ for himself, stands in the way of realizing* the 
mighty import of these assuring words of Jesus, even by 
those who accept him as supreme authority. 

On the other hand, the materialistic and agnostic bias 
of those who do not in any sense regard him as super- 
natural, leads either to the rejection of the so-called mira- 
culous features of the gospel narratives, or accepting, 
perhaps in a modified form, the exceptional character of 
his life and works, attribute these to some special en- 
dowment or possibly abnormal condition, and thus not 
to be taken as a normal standard of attainment for all 
men. 

Others, again, having imbibed somewhat of the East- 
ern philosophy, while accepting the probable truth of 
the Christ life, believe him to have been a reincarnated 
Avatar who had reached his marvellous attainment 
through the experiences and discipline of many previous 
lives or planetary incarnations, and, therefore, no stand- 
ard for the possible immediate realization of others who 
have not passed through similar pre-existent experi- 
ences. 

Still again, the modern spiritists, believing all in- 
spiration to come from departed spirits, account for his 
ptional character and works on the basis of medium- 
sliij}, and believe him to have been a mere instrument in 
the hands of a class of spirits of perhaps an exception- 
ally high order of intelligence and power. 

"With these, or any other sufficient bias, it is easy to see 



18 THE OPEN DOOK. 

why the simple and direct words of Jesus, involving such 
stupendous results in their promise, should be misap- 
prehended and fail to fully arrest the attention and en- 
list the profoundest interest of mankind. 

The unbiassed reader, however, if such can be found, 
will observe that not one of the positions we have speci- 
fied is borne out by the gospel narratives, nor by the 
claim of the Christ for himself, who certainly ought to 
be the best judge of the nature and source of his own 
inspiration and experience. In the simplest and most 
direct manner possible, he attributes his remarkable en- 
lightenment and power directly to his personal recogni- 
tion of, and co-operation with, the immediate indwelling 
life of " the Father " in his soul. In the same simplic- 
ity and directness of language he continually insisted 
that the same indwelling life of God " the Father " of 
all men awaited only personal recognition and co-opera- 
tion, to effect a like result and experience in all. " Be- 
lievest thou not," he said to the doubting Thomas, and 
so to all doubting Thomases, " Believest thou not that I 
am in the Father, and the Father in me ? The words that 
I say unto you I speak not from myself ; but the Father 
that dwelleth in me doeth his works. Believe me that I 
am in the Father and the Father in me ; or else believe 
me for the very works sake. Verily verily, I say unto 
you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall 
he do also ; and greater than these shall he do ; because 
I go unto the Father." The psalmist in inspired thought 
had seen this possibility when he wrote : " With thee 
is the fountain of life ; and in thy light shall I see 
light." Jesus had realized its truth and could say, With 



THE CHRISTIAN THE0S0PHY. 19 

tliee is the fountain of life; and in thy light I have 
found light. 

The True Interpretation. — This testimony of Jesus 
of his own experience, reveals the fact that he had risen 
out of self and the limitations of the sense consciousness, 
and dwelt in and wrought from the impersonal plane of 
the spiritual consciousness — the consciousness of his life t 
in God; and of the spiritual nature and supremacy of } 
his own being as the child of God. 

God, as universal Being, is necessarily impersonal and 
all-embracing in nature and character. Man, as an em- 
bodied personality, though the offspring of God, has the 
necessary external limitations of an individual, in nature 
and character. As such he holds specific personal rela- 
tions toward other personalities, to his environment, and 
to the universal Father— the impersonal source of his 
being. 

The limitations of the external individuality and sense- 
consciousness, however, do not apply to the inner spirit- 
ual nature, which necessarily partakes of the impersonal 
life and character of the Father. Hence the laying down 
of self and rising out of and above the limitations of the 
sense consciousness — which relate only to the external 
individuality — to the impersonal plane of the spiritual 
consciousness, does not imply the abolition of the per- 
sonal identity or the personal consciousness of being. It 
is only the laying down of all bias of the external sense 
judgment and feeling, letting go of the clinging sense 
of the individuality and its limitations, which is the spirit 
of self, that the impersonal and impartial spirit of the 
Father may find embodiment and expression in all the 



20 THE OPEN DOOE. 

personal activities and relations. It is rising to the con- 
sciousness of divine sonship and identity of nature with 
the Father, and seeking as his loyal children, the personal 
embodiment of His Spirit of impersonal, impartial and 
universal sympathy, charity and good-will toward all. 
It is, indeed, the transformation of the self-seeking indi- 
viduality into an impersonal or unselfish personality; 
that is, a personality that has risen above all bias of per- 
sonal considerations, predilections, discriminations and 
preferences, into the spirit of impartial sympathy and 
justice toward all. 

It is entering into the spiritual supremacy of being, 
which is the personal consciousness of impersonal being, 
that i£, the consciousness of partaking of the essential 
nature of the impersonal, indestructible and divine qual- 
ity of the Father. 

The Practical Explanation. — This is not, after all, so 
difficult of apprehension if we think of the one universal 
life as the Effluence of God, who is pure spiritual Being, 
and that all living things and beings are partakers of 
this life, and exist only by virtue of it. 

All that we know of life, per se, is as it is manifest in 
organism and function. In this manifestation its com- 
plete supremacy over the material elements is exhibited 
from the very first recognized motions of its activity. 

This is seen in the immediate transformation of the 
crude elements of the inorganic world into the living 
substance of a vegetable organism, and again in the 
transmutation of one form of organic substance and tis- 
sue into another, in the building up, repair, and healing 
of the living organisms of animals and men. 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 21 

Life only proceeds from and propagates life. Careful 
scientific experiments and tests have dissipated forever 
the dream of its spontaneous generation, under any pos- 
sible arrangement of strictly material elements and con- 
ditions. 

Since, then, life as a manifest transcendent energy is 
not a property or attribute of matter, does not originate 
in material conditions, and is not the product of organ- 
ism, but is itself the organizing power in which its tran- 
scendency over matter, and therefore independence of 
matter, per se, is demonstrated, it must proceed from that 
which is not matter, and which transcends matter, and 
which has life in itself. 

For that mysterious source or spring from which this 
living energy proceeds, and which itself is original and 
essential life, we have no better name than " Spirit," and 
Spirit is God. 

God as original, essential, and absolute Being, we in- 
tuitively conceive to be infinite in intelligence and good- 
ness or wisdom and love ; and the most inspired and 
trusting souls on earth have claimed and found in the 
infinite AVisdom and Goodness the eternal Fatherhood 
of human spirits. 

Life, therg as a spiritual energy manifest in organism 
and function, is the expression or revelation not only of 
a transcendent overruling Intelligence, Goodness and 
Providence, but an indwelling Presence and Power, an 
immanent Deity, immanent in the omnipresent energy 
of His being. 

This universal Life or Effluence of God, under the im- 
pulse of the infinite love, ever seeking through the living 



22 THE OPEN DOOR. 

processes of the organic world to bring forth children to 
the Father, becomes specialized in the individual char- 
acteristics and specific functions of each living organism, 
from the simplest structure of plant and animal life up 
to the complex organism of man, in which the Deific at- 
tributes become at length focalized and engermed in em- 
bryo. 

This energy of Deific life, as some poet has expressed 
it, " sleeps in the mineral, breathes in the vegetable, 
dreams in the animal, and comes to consciousness in 
man." 

Man is the first embodied form of life in the organic 
w r orld in which the spiritual attributes of a rational and 
moral nature have come forth in organic function and 
expression. He is, therefore, the first being in the order 
of evolution capable of thinking of and seeking after 
God, and thus awaking to the realization of his own 
spiritual nature and divine sonship. 

These rational and moral powers are, indeed, we re- 
peat, specialized germs of the Deific attributes, deposited 
from the Universal Intelligence and Goodness, by which 
man becomes an embodied reproduction, in miniature, of 
the Supreme Being, a child of God, and, therefore, him- 
self a god in embryo. 

As such man is endowed, and the only being on our 
planet thus endowed, with the free powers of conscious- 
ness and volition, which qualify him for recognizing and 
mentally co-operating with the indwelling and outwork- 
ing life of the Father in his own being, in th£ functions 
of both soul and body. This involves also the same 
power to mentally interfere and disturb its workings in 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 23 

these functions. The normal development and healthful 
activity and vigor of all these functions depend, there- 
fore, upon the attitude and state of mind and feeling in 
their relation to the indwelling life of God in them. 

If, then, with Paul, we realize that " in God we live, 
move, and have our being," and with the Ghrist that we 
are in the Father and the Father in us, then we shall 
recognize the supreme fact, that the animating life of 
our being is of God, not of ourselves. 

Since, then, the generation of life is not dependent up- 
on our own limited and feeble powers, but is itself the in- 
dwelling life of God, and therefore perfect ; and since, 
also, the law of its working is perfect and will effect per- 
fect results in our organisms, if not interfered with by , 
our free powers of consciousness and volition, we have a 
perfect basis for the exercise of faith in cO-operative men- 
tal action. 

The divine ideal and provision for man in both soul 
and body are, of necessity, absolutely perfect. They are 
actualized in human experience, however, only by the co- 
operation of man himself, in the exercise of his own free 
powers of choice and action. 

Since, then, the life and power in us is the indwelling 
life and energy of God, its perfect law is equal to and 
will outwork in personal experience the divinest results, 
to the full extent of our own co-operation. 

Our highest conception of, and faith in its possibilities 
of development and perfection in us, will certainly be 
realized when perfectly co-operated with to this end. 
We can thus co-operate with it only by recognizing its 
divine supremacy and perfection in the functions of our 



I 

24 TIIE OPEN DOOR. 

being, and expecting and trusting it perfectly, or God 
in it, to outwork and effect the desired perfect result. 
" Have faith in God . . . and nothing shall be im- 
possible unto you." "All things are possible to him 
that believeth." 

Man must, and sooner or later will, learn to realize his 
life in God, by first recognizing that life in all its forms 
and phases is of spiritual not of material nature and 
origin, and therefore that its supply and renewal are 
from within. His emancipation and deliverance from 
the weakness and bondage of flesh and sense can be 
effected by no other means. 

So long as we cling, in the spirit of self-will, to the 
sense-consciousness of external dependence, and to the 
physical limitations under that consciousness, we inter- 
fere with the divine inworking by our distrust and fears, 
and thus hold it to the limitations w r e ourselves set up. 

It is, indeed, through our distrust and fears under this 
physical sense of limitation, that we fall into bondage 
and become the subjects, where we may and should be 
masters, of the external conditions and ever-changing 
vicissitudes of the outward world to which we cling, 
through the self-seeking spirit of the sense-conscious- 
ness. How true indeed are the Master's words, " Who- 
soever shall seek to save his life shall lose it ; and who- 
soever shall lose his life shall preserve it." 

The functions of life — ordained of God — are, first, to 
build up an organism that shall perfectly represent, 
give expression to, and answer the demands of the soul 
of which it is the embodiment and organic instrument 
of service. Second, to keep that organism in health, 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 25 

vigor and repair (renewal of waste), while it is needed 
and held in this service of the soul ; and third, to restore 
and heal it when, through accident, ignorance, or any 
cause, it becomes injured or diseased. These functions, 
when recognized and trusted as the immediate manifes- 
tation of a divine activity, will absolutely fulfil the pur- 
pose for which they were ordained of God, and secure 
these results in divine perfection. 

What is thus true of the body in the working of this 
law of mental co-operation with the divine power and 
purpose in the functions of life, is, in a still deeper and 
higher sense, true of the soul. 

The self-evident object of a differentiated personal ex- 
istence as the embodied offspring of God is, that man, 
as an indestructible spiritual organism and self-con- 
scious personal identity, a child of the infinite wisdom 
and goodness, shall unfold in the life, attributes and 
character of the Father, and become perfect as the child 
of God, as He is perfect as the Father of men. 

God, being " no respecter of persons," is to be thought 
of as absolutely impersonal and impartial in His atti- 
tude toward men, and the entire creation, as the objects 
of His perfect care and providence. Hence man, to be- 
come God-like and perfect in character and life, as the 
Father is perfect, must also become impersonal and im- 
partial in His attitude toward men and things, and so at 
one with the Father in all the relations of life and being. 

This is possible only as he rises out of the sense-con- 
sciousness and the self-seeking spirit and limitations of 
the external man, into the spiritual consciousness of life 
in God and unity with His Spirit of universal love, sym- 



26 THE OPEN DOOR. 

pathy, and divine supremacy of being. " Ye have heard 
that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, 
and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your 
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them 
that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use 
you, and persecute you ; that ye may be the children of 
your Father which is in heaven : for he maketh his sun 
to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on 
the just and on the unjust. 5 ' "He is kind to the un- 
thankful and the evil." " Ye therefore shall be perfect 
as your heavenly Father is perfect." 

When, therefore, Jesus said : " Believe me that I am 
in the Father and [the Father in me : or else believe me 
for the very works' sake," he simply meant and practi- 
cally said, that he was dwelling and acting in the true 
spiritual consciousness ; the consciousness of his life in 
God, and of God in him. He was conscious of his unity 
with the Father's Spirit, and of the Father's Spirit in 
him, so that the words he spake and the works he did 
were not from his own wisdom and power, but from the 
inspired wisdom and power of the Father abiding in 
him, to which the impersonal character of these words 
and works bore testimony. 

Dwelling on, and acting from the high and impersonal 
plane of the spiritual consciousness, in which, as an em- 
bodied spiritual being and son of God his unity with 
the Father was realized, all his external activities of 
mind and body were executed under the law and inspira- 
tion of the spiritual life. He was in the Spirit and the 
power of the Spirit was in all his words and works. 

In those explicit words, therefore, to his astonished 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 27 

and perplexed neighbors — " My doctrine is not mine, but 
his that sent me ; if any man willeth to do his will, he 
shall know of the teaching." " I can of mine own self do 
nothing ; as I hear, I judge ; and my judgment is just 
because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the 
Father which hath sent me "—The Lord Christ gave to 
them and bequeathed to us the law and conditions 
through which he came to his realization, and through 
which all, he assures us, may do the same. 

Nevertheless, the mass of men to-day, biassed, as we 
have shown, by some preconceived standard, read this 
mighty promise of Christ without the startling recogni- 
tion of the message as specifically addressed to them, 
and possible of immediate application and practical re- 
alization here and now. 

Significance of the Essential Facts. — Let us pause, 
then, and, laying aside all bias and prejudgment in the 
matter, candidly re-examine the claim and the promise 
in connection with the illustrative example of the Mas- 
ter, as they stand in their simplicity and unadorned set- 
ting in the broken but evidently honest record of the 
Evangelists. 

In doing so what do we find ! Simply the marvel of a 
young, unlettered mechanic, the son of a peasant car- 
penter of Nazareth, working with his father at his trade 
until of age ; with no hint of access to unusual sources of 
occult lore and training, as some have suggested, and with 
no advantage above his brethren and neighbors of that 
ure province, yet coming at once into such marvellous 
-cendency of wisdom and occult power that all who 
had known him from childhood were astonished and 



28 THE OPEN DOOR* 

perplexed beyond measure, and queried among them- 
selves, saying, " How knoweth this man letters, having 
never learned ? " " Is not this the carpenter ? " " And his 
brethren, are they not with us ! " " Whence, then, hath 
this man this wisdom and these wonderful works ? " Let 
us, then, look squarely at this claim, that Jesus of Naza- 
reth, an illiterate mechanic, with only the traditional 
training and home influence of the Jewish peasantry and 
the teaching of the synagogue, attained, through the 
faithful following of his own intuitions, the transcendent 
life of spiritual supremacy, illumination, and occult 
power recorded of him ; that he thus became practically 
the Master of the forces of life and of death, so that by 
the majesty of his illuminated mind the very tempest 
and raging sea yielded to its sway and obeyed his com- 
mand ; that on occasions the substance of a few loaves 
and fishes multiplied under his hands to feed a fainting 
multitude ; that by his word or touch of living power 
the lepers were immediately cleansed, the maniacs re- 
stored to reason and friends, all manner of sickness and 
disease instantaneously healed, the sleeping dead called 
back to life, and finally, yielding his own physical life to 
the sleep of death, and restoring it again, translated his 
body by a triumphant process of spiritualization to the 
celestial world, without the dissolution we call death. 
Yet, higher and diviner than all these, and upon which all 
these depended, was the attainment of that moral grand- 
eur of spirit recorded of him, which, while yielding un- 
resistantly to the murderous hate of his enemies, could, 
in the very hour of crucifixion pray for his murderers ; 
" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 



THE CHEISTIAN THE0S0PHY. 29 

To so much at least the four evangelists are united in 
their testimony. Matthew and Luke only contain the 
legend of the " miraculous conception." No reference is 
made to this by either Mark or John, to whom the first 
and last gospel narratives are credited, and who, if such 
a claim was held and believed by them, and considered 
essential to the story of the Christ, would certainly not 
have left it out of their record. That claim, therefore, 
may be left out by us, with other apocryphal matter, as 
not essential to the picture preserved to us of the Christ 
life and work. 

That some special pre-natal conditions conspired to 
stamp him with an exceptional spiritual genius, a natu- 
ral-born genius for inspiration and intuition, is quite 
likely. Geniuses for Mathematics, Poetry, Music, Art, 
Invention, Statesmanship, Generalship, etc., have been 
made the same way. This, with the spiritual visions 
and dreams recorded of the mother of Jesus, might 
have been the real basis of the legend of the miraculous 
conception as copied into the story of Matthew and 
Luke. 

If, however, the wonderful things to which all the 
evangelists unite in testifying, were, in their essential 
features, facts of experience in the life, death, resurrec- 
tion and translation of Jesus the unlettered carpenter of 
Judea, then, as he assures us, a like experience is possible 
to all men through the faithful, intelligent following of 
his example and instruction. His example as the Christ 
points and leads the entire humanity to which he be- 
longs up to a like achievement, otherwise he is not the 
Christ or divinely anointed leader of his race. 



30 THE OPEN DOOR. 

His direct appeal to men, then, as the Christ, should, 
like a resurrection trumpet, arrest the attention of every 
living- soul and cause it to listen to his divine message, 
and seek to enter into the mighty import of his wonder- 
ful words. " The words that I speak unto you, they are 
Spirit and they are Life." They were indeed spoken 
from the spirit and in the life, and therefore carry with 
them the weight of a divine authority. "The words 
that I say unto you I speak not from myself, but the 
Father abiding in me." " If ye continue in my words, 
then shall ye be my disciples indeed, and ye shall know 
the truth, and the truth shall make you free." 

If, then, those utterances of the Lord Christ providen- 
tially bequeathed to us, in which he specifically gave the 
key to, or secret of his own spiritual emancipation and 
attainment while in the flesh, be carefully considered in 
connection with the story of his life, the law of divine 
attainment will be opened to the mind, and the condi- 
tions of perfect inspiration and intuitive perception or 
true spiritual insight fully understood. 

The Specific Application.— First, he gives the attitude 
of mind and will, necessary for divine inspiration and 
enlightenment. " If any man willeth to do his will, he 
shall know of the teaching." 

The personal will is the expression of the dominant 
desire. When, therefore, this is to know and do the will 
of God, that is, to fulfil the divine purpose in the func- 
tions and activities of our being, rather than indulge the 
pleasures of sense or fill out the ambitions of the selfish 
life, the personal will becomes one with the Father's, 
and the soul is thereby opened to the immediate inspira- 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 31 

tion of the divine wisdom and goodness. It was this 
supreme desire to perfectly know and do the Father's 
will that opened to Jesus, as he assures us, the full 
revelation of God to his soul. " My meat it is to do the 
will of him that sent me and to finish his work." 

Second, he gives the conditions necessary to the exer- 
cise of intuition, or the immediate perception of truth 
concerning any legitimate matter to which the attention 
is directed, and through which the spiritual understand- 
ing and the higher esoteric wisdom and occult mastery 
are reached. " For there is nothing covered that shall 
not be revealed; neither hid that shall not be known." 

Here is the rule he observed: "Of mine own self I 
can do nothing ; as I hear, I judge ; and my judgment is 
just, because I seek not mine own will but the will of 
the Father which hath sent me." This means the entire 
suspension for the time of the external judgment based 
upon sensuous impressions and the appearance of things. 
It means that we put in the background all personal 
desire to find things in any given way or as we would 
have them, and listen only to the inner voice which re- 
veals the truth, independent of consequences or personal 
predilection. It means that we interpret all sensuous 
and external testimony by this inner spiritual sense of 
things, and base our final judgment upon its testimony, 
independent of any and every personal consideration 
whatsoever. 

These are the conditions and attitude of mind neces- 
sary to, and which secure, divine inspiration and the un- 
biassed exercise of intuition or the psychometric power; 
the power to perceive the truth and inwardly sense the 



32 THE OPEN DOOR. 

real character and condition of whatever the undivided 
interest and attention of the mind are fastened upon. 

We are thus enabled to fulfil the Master's injunction, 
to " judge not according to appearances, but judge right- 
eous judgment." 

The Master said that his " judgment was just, because 
he sought not his own will but the will of the Father, 
etc." He would have nothing but the truth for the 
truth's sake ; and would do nothing but the right for the 
sake of the right, and thus be at one with the Father, 
whatever sacrifice these might bring to personal pride, 
desire, or convenience. 

The supreme desire to know and fulfil only the will 
and purpose of God, or the perfect truth and right in all 
things, necessarily brings the soul into unity with God, 
and opens it to His immediate inspiration and enlighten- 
ment. Intuition then becomes pure spiritual discern- 
ment, in which the wisdom of God is unmistakably 
revealed. 

The perfect inspiration and the perfect intuition may 
not be realized at once, but assuming and maintaining 
this attitude, and observing these conditions at every 
effort, will in due time bring them ; they are the only 
mental attitude and conditions that will secure them 
with certainty and perfection. 

Necessary Precautions. — While the inspirational and 
intuitive powers are being cultivated and established by 
this method, care should be taken against accepting 
imaginative fancy for intuition ; and until the neophyte 
in the way has learned to make the discrimination, the 
supposed intuitions should be fully verified. Before the 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 33 

judgment, based upon external observation and experi- 
ence and the ordinary process of reasoning, is wholly 
subordinated to the presumptive higher authority of in- 
tuition or interior spiritual discernment, the clear and 
unmistakable power of intuition should be developed, 
its certain reliability established by experimental veri- 
fication, and complete familiarity with its working at- 
tained. 

Until this is done its exercise and practice for devel- 
opment and training should be regarded in the same 
provisional light of any corresponding exercises and 
training for proficiency. Without this there will be 
more or less danger of self-deception and fanaticism. 
For this reason also associative effort and the help of 
those who have attained some degree of proficiency are 
of incalculable service. Much valuable time and many 
needless perplexing experiences may thus be saved. 

A few general yet all-important suggestions, only, can 
be given in a book. 

Helpful Suggestions.— Here is one suggestion that will 
be helpful to all trembling and fearful souls, which is, 
that everyone who has reached the plane of moral percep- 
tion and rational discrimination knows absolutely with- 
in himself the difference between the desires of the flesh 
and the higher demands of the spiritual nature. 

Here is a starting-point for all, and which all can 
grasp, since the higher demands of the spiritual nature 
are at once the basis and expression of inspiration and 
intuition, and their strict observance secures the full and 
perfect realization of both. It was to timid souls, in the 
light of this truth, that the Apostle appealed when he 



34 THE OPEN DOOR. 

wrote : " Work out your own salvation with fear and 
trembling ; for it is God that worketh in you, both to 
will and to do of his good pleasure." 

If such, also, will carefully watch the motions of the 
mind in its various moods, they will find themselves as 
clearly able to distinguish between the mere intellectual 
opinions based upon external evidences, and those 
intuitive convictions of the soul which are based upon 
an inner spiritual sense of truth, independent of, and 
sometimes in direct opposition to all external evidence. 
It is this inner sense that we are to specifically recognize 
and cultivate as the door to all higher experiences and 
attainments. 

The Great Liability. — The . one thing most to be 
guarded against in this direction is, that the interior 
impressions and convictions are not the offspring of 
personal desire; that the wish to have them so is not 
the father to the thoughts or suggestions. This is the 
one great danger of self-deception in all attempts to de- 
velop and exercise the inner perception, and the higher 
psychic powers of the soul, without first seeking divine 
inspiration and guidance. 

There is such a thing as self-hypnotization as well 
as the hypnotizing influence of suggestion from other 
minds. Hence the importance of maintaining the strict- 
ly normal conditions and relations of the mind, as in 
certain abnormal conditions, easily induced in many, 
subjective desires and suggestions are readily made to 
appear as objective realities. 

This is the source of the many hallucinations and 
false and conflicting visions of God, heaven, hell, can- 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 35 

brazed saints, and other supposed spiritual as well as 
physical realities, under the ecstasy of religious excite- 
ments. 

Millions of souls have thus been hypnotized into the 
various unnatural, absurd, and conflicting religious con- 
ceptions and forms of worship, under the preaching of 
Christian (?) dogma, and the realistic mental pictures of 
revivalists. 

No Abnormalism Involved. — Man needs first to learn 
that his relations to God and the things of the Spirit are 
as normal as are his relations to Nature and the things 
of the outward world ; and that his experiences resulting 
from the personal realization of his divine relationship 
should be as simple and normal as is his daily experience 
with outward things. Abnormalism in one relation will 
tend to induce the same in the other. 

Man will never hold his true and legitimate relation- 
ship with Nature, through which he is to attain his 
mastery over her, until he stands in his true and normal 
relation with God as a spiritual being and the child of 
His love and perfect providence. 

Herein is seen the supreme necessity of observing 
the Master's rule in first seeking and establishing the 
strictly impersonal attitude of mind and feeling. Only 
by so doing do we come into unity with the impersonal 
Spirit of the Father, and open ourselves to the imme- 
diate touch and inspiration of His impartial wisdom and 
goodness. It is indeed this supreme desire of being in 
unity with the Father [that His divine and perfect will 
and purpose may be fulfilled in us, by which we are 
really brought into this impersonal attitude of mind and 



3<J THE OPEN DOOR. 

feeling, so essential to true advancement in spiritual 
realization and attainment. 

The Greatest Present Need.— The Christian Church 
has so long taught the innate depravity and spiritual in- 
capacity of man, that the one thing a large majority of 
the people of to-day need most to know is, that they 
really have intuitions, or an intuitive and inspirational 
capacity to cultivate and develop. They need to be es- 
tablished in the confidence that genuine inspiration, and 
unfailing intuition are actually possible to and practi- 
cable for them. 

Many, indeed, need to be assured that they have a 
spiritual nature which relates them to God and the 
spiritual kingdom within, as positively, vitally, and 
naturally as they are related to the external of things 
through the senses. 

Inspiration and intuition are, we repeat, as natural 
and legitimate functions of the spiritual nature as sensa- 
tion and sense perception are of the sensuous and physi- 
cal. Men are as naturally receptive to inspiration from 
God through their inmost life, which is the effluence of 
God, as they are to impressions from the outward world 
through sensation, when their attention and desire are 
awakened to it. Intuition is the direct action of the 
mind in immediate response to this inspiration from the 
Divine, as sense perception is the immediate action of 
the mind in response to sensuous impressions from ex- 
ternal objects. 

One is the response of the mind to vibrations in the 
nerve-aura caused by external impressions ; the other is 
its response to vibrations in the central essence or ani- 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 37 

mating life of the soul and its faculties, from the sphere 
of the divine, from that interior kingdom of eternal 
realities in which truth and righteousness, wisdom and 
goodness, beauty and gladness are enthroned in infinite 
perfection of being. Man opens his soul to these vibra- 
tions from the Divine, by desiring above all things to 
know the will and purpose of God in any specific direc- 
tion or thing, in other words, the absolute truth concern- 
ing it. 

One is the action of the mind's powers on the plane of 
the sense-consciousness, the other is the exercise of the 
same powers on the interior plane of the spiritual con- 
sciousness. It depends, therefore, entirely upon the di- 
rection of the attention and desires as to which plane 
shall be the centre of the mind's activities. 

These powers having been first awakened, and prima- 
rily developed and disciplined on the plane of the senses, 
the attention and desires are spontaneously active 
through habit in that direction. In order, therefore, to 
have as positive and decided experience on the spiritual 
plane, and establish the spiritual consciousness and the 
spontaneous activity of the soul's powers on this plane 
as a habit, a corresponding interest must be awakened 
in spiritual things. The attention and desire must be 
specifically directed to the soul's interior relations to 
God and His kingdom, and the divine communion and 
fellowship to be realized in and through this relation- 
ship. 

The full recognition of this high possibility, with the 
attention and desire fixed confidently upon its immedi- 
ate realization, opens the soul to the consciousness of 



38 THE OPEN DOOR. 

the divine touch — its vibrations in the inward life — and 
the true spiritual consciousness is awakened. Hence, by 
a sufficient persistent repetition of this experience, both 
the higher consciousness and the habit of exercising the 
mental powers on its plane become permanently and 
firmly established. 

This once effected, intuition becomes a clear, positive 
and unmistakable function of the soul, as normal and 
spontaneous in its action as sense perception, and in no 
more danger of being confounded with imagination or 
fancy. 

Being awakened by the divine vibrations from within 
and above, or the action of the mind under divine inspi- 
ration, intuition becomes the expression of divine wis- 
dom, and, practically, the voice of God in the soul. 
This voice is never wholly silent in any soul that has at- 
tained the moral consciousness or sense of personal re- 
sponsibility. It needs, therefore, only to be recognized 
as of divine authority, listened to and followed, to lead 
the soul out of darkness into light, out of bondage into 
freedom, out of weakness into power, the light, freedom 
and power of the spiritual life, "the glorious liberty 
of the children of God." " For the grace of God that 
bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us 
that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should 
live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present 
world." 

Moral Adjustment the Primary Condition.— From all 
this it will be seen that before the intuition and higher 
powers of the soul can be safely and successfully culti- 
vated and exercised in the line of occult matters, or the 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 39 

study and mastery of nature from the interior plane, 
there must be the perfect moral adjustment of the soul 
to God in the personal life, so that under the enlighten- 
ment of divine wisdom, all things may be correctly inter- 
preted and the personal activities directed in accordance 
with the divine order and purpose. 

Intuition, as a function, is the receptacle and expres- 
sion of divine inspiration. It is that inner sense which 
reflects the will and the wisdom of the Divine Spirit in 
the human soul. It should be recognized, cultivated, and 
exercised, therefore, as the revealer of the mind and will 
of the Father, a safe and sure guide to truth and right- 
eousness. 

There is a right and perfect way for every man, under 
every possible circumstance and condition, which, if fol- 
lowed, will bring the best possible results into his life. 
That is the way ordained of God in infinite wisdom 
and goodness. Intuition under divine-enlightenment is 
the function ordained of God to reveal that perfect way 
to man. If, then, anyone desiring to know and do only 
that right and perfect way, and recognizing it to be or- 
dained of God, opens himself to enlightenment from the 
Father's Spirit, intuition, reflecting the Father's wisdom, 
will point the way and reveal the truth. He then will- 
eth to do the Father's will and shall know of the divine 
teaching. 

In many of the affairs of life man cannot judge or de- 
termine the absolutely right or perfect way from the 
facts of his own external observation and experience. 
He does not know all the facts and conditions involved, 
and, therefore, an absolutely perfect judgment is impos- 



40 THE OPEN DOOR. 

sible. With the great Teacher he must say : "Of mine 
own self I can do nothing." In his own wisdom, based 
upon the facts of external observation and experience, 
he can do nothing in the certainty of its being absolutely 
right and perfect. 

There is this inner sense, however, possessed by every- 
one, which acts independent of, and often in opposition 
to, the external judgment and experience, and senses 
with more or less distinctness, the right and truth in 
any matter ; this we call intuition. As this is the recep- 
tacle and expression of divine inspiration, if, we repeat, 
man, under any circumstance or perplexity, will but turn 
from the external judgment and appearance, and confi- 
dently open himself to the enlightenment of the Father's 
spirit concerning the way, that way will be revealed to 
him in the clear sense or inner voice of this intuition. 

The more fully he stills the outward activities, and 
listens to and follows this voice, the more rapidly will it 
unfold and become an unerring guide in truth and right, 
an unmistakable revelation of God in wisdom and power. 

"When a man has fully consecrated himself to the fol- 
lowing of this guide in the conduct of life — as the in- 
ward revelation of the perfect way and will of God to 
him, at whatever sacrifice of personal desire, ambition, 
or apparent gain, he has then taken the true attitude 
toward God and the world; and the best possible for 
him will certainly come into his life. 

Having come to the mastery of himself under its lead- 
ing, he is prepared to enter upon a high and grand 
career of achievement, as he has within himself the key 
to the solution of every problem, and the mastery of 



THE CHEISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 41 

every difficulty. He will thus demonstrate in personal 
experience, the truth of the Master's assurance, " If any 
man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teach- 
ing ; " and again, " Of mine own self I can do nothing ; 
as I hear, I judge : and my judgment is just ; because I 
seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which 
hath sent me." The Master listened to the divine voice 
of intuition, followed its guidance, and interpreted all 
things in its light. This answered the question : 
" Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these wonder- 
ful works ? " 

This is the door of entrance into the kingdom, the 
kingdom of light, freedom and power. It is the begin- 
ning of the way which leads to the realization of God, 
the realization of spiritual supremacy of being in one- 
ness or unity with the Father. It is the key to all di- 
vine attainment and spiritual achievement. 

Intuition, then, is that inner sense, possessed by all, 
however feeble its action, which senses the right and 
truth in all things and conditions, independent of exter- 
nal impressions, because it senses the presence and pur- 
pose of God in them. 

"In God we live, move, and have our being." His 
Spirit, therefore, not only internenetrates our being as 
its inmost life, but enswathes it, as well. Hence it is 
that the supreme desire to know the divine law and pur- 
pose in all things and conditions opens the soul to the 
active conscious touch of His Spirit, and the vibrations 
of its activity in our own ; this is inspiration. 

Intuition, we repeat, is the action of the mind under 
the enlightenment of this inspiration — or the vibrations 



42 THE OPEN DOOR. 

of the divine activity in the soul — by which it perceives 
or senses all things and conditions in the light of the 
Divine wisdom and purpose in them. 

It reaches behind all false seeming to the reality ; and 
knows when things are in their true or false relations and 
conditions, because it is one with God in its perception 
of them. 

Through spiritual intuition the soul sees practically 
all things from the stand-point of the Divine, and so 
finds and holds supremacy in and over them, discriminat- 
ing unerringly between truth and error, right and wrong, 
by its unity with God in its relations toward them. 

The Final Test. — If it be asked, then, by the beginner 
in the way how to discriminate between the suggestions 
of fancy, or the spontaneous opinions and judgment of 
the intellect, and a true intuition, here is the key by 
which each may unerringly determine for himself. Let 
him ask himself these questions : Is it the supreme de- 
sire of the heart and determination of the will to know 
and do only the divine and perfect will and way of 
the Father, at whatever seeming sacrifice of personal 
gain, ambition, wish, or any consideration whatsoever, 
save the fulfilment of the Father's will and purpose in 
me 1 Is this desire and determination based upon the 
conviction and perfect faith, that this only will bring the 
best possible good into my life and hold me permanently 
to it? 

"When these questions can be answered truly in the af- 
firmative, and the consecration to the divine leading in 
intuition is complete, there will be no further doubt or 
question in the matter. The soul will gladly drop all 






THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 43 



efforts at attainment under the guidance of its own im- 
perfect wisdom and preconceived method, for the guid- 
ance of the Father's perfect wisdom in its effort, and 
the adoption of the Father's perfect method, which will 
then be clearly revealed. 

If we attempt the development and exercise of intui- 
tion and the higher psychic powers for the advance- 
ment of personal ends, the increase of our own wisdom, 
or the attainment of power and advantage over others, 
we open ourselves to the illusions and self-deceptions 
which come in from the selfish spirit, and the perversi- 
ties of self-will. But if we recognize the infinite suprem- 
acy, wisdom, goodness, and Fatherhood of God, and in 
the loyal spirit of a true divine sonship seek to know 
only His wisdom, and to fulfil His purpose in all things 
then, so surely as God is, and man is His child, will 
the wisdom and the purpose of the Father be revealed 
to the soul. So surely will the most passionate desire 
after God, the most affectionate longing of the soul for 
communion and fellowship with the Father, be answered 
in the completest fulness of His divine sympathy and 
revelation. 

This was the secret of the Christ, through which he 
entered into the marvellous fulness of His divine realiza- 
tion and attainment, and through which all who follow 
his leading may reach a like experience. 

Intuition thus becomes the opened eye of the soul, 
which penetrates beneath the surface to the heart and 
soul of things, and beyond the vail of sense into the sub- 
lime depths and heights and mysteries of life and being. 
It is the spiritual vision of a son of God which peers 



44 THE OPEN DOOR. 

into all the wondrous realms of the Father's universe and 
kingdom. 

It is also the opened ear of the soul, which hears the 
accents of the Father's loving voice in the revelation of 
Himself in all things and especially in the hearts of His 
children ; which hears the sound of the Father's foot- 
steps in the marching ages and in the unfolding of the 
mighty processes of creation and history ; which hears 
Him in the play of His activity in the high and the low, 
the great and the small, and in the vibrations of melody 
which on every hand rise to swell the universal harmony 
and music of the singing spheres. 

" We need but open eye and ear 
V To find the orient's marvels here, 

Our common daily life divine, 
And every land a Palestine." 

The Salvation Involved. — It will be observed that the 
salvation involved and promised in this ideal and method 
of the Christ has no reference whatever to a special sal- 
vation from a hell of torment in another world. It refers 
specifically and only to the perfection of the personal 
and social life of mankind here and now, in this world 
as in all worlds, by the perfect co-ordination of the 
human will with the divine and perfect will of the All- 
Father.] 

The motive appealed to is not fear of an angry God 
who is to be appeased and reconciled to man, but to the 
spirit of divine sonship and loyalty to an all-wise and 
beneficent Father in heaven. It appeals to the rational 
necessity of recognizing and co-operating with the all- 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 45 

embracing and perfect providence of the Father for the 
realization of perfect results in human experience. 

It promises, as a result of this co-operation, the imme- 
diate realization of spiritual supremacy and self-mastery 
here and now, and the ultimate fulfilment of the unut- 
terably grand and exalted destiny which awaits the de- 
velopment of man as a son of God, a child of the infinite 
love and providence. 

The attention of the religious world has been so long 
and so fully diverted from a present to a future salvation 
by the traditional teaching, and from the spiritual nature 
and divine possibilities of man, announced and demon- 
strated by the Christ, to the theological misconception 
of his innate depravity and utter incapacity for any di- 
vine attainment, that the slumbering powers of the spir- 
itual nature which await only the kindling touch of a 
divine inspiration, to blossom forth in the majesty and 
power of the Christ-life, have been neglected, forgotten, 
and ignored. The only salvation the Church could con- 
sistently offer on the basis of this theological misconcep- 
tion, was an imputed righteousness, through faith in a 
vicarious substitution. As man had no power to fulfil 
the law himself, it had to be done for him by a perfect 
being, and imputed to him on its acceptance through 
faith in its efficacy. 

" Xot everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the 
will of my Father who is in heaven." The salvation j 
taught by Jesus is found only in doing the Father's 
will. That will is expressed in the law of the personal j 
life based in the moral nature and spiritual constitution, 



46 TIIE OPEN DOOK. 

ill the very nature of the powers and functions ordained 
of Him. His will and purpose in man can be fulfilled, 
therefore, only through the normal development and 
healthful exercise of all these powers and functions in 
their co-ordinated activity. 

Until, then, the higher powers slumbering in the 
spiritual nature are awakened and brought forth to their 
divine supremacy and activity, the will and purpose of 
God in them cannot be fulfilled, nor the high destiny of 
man as a child of God realized. 

The activity and supremacy of the spiritual nature over 
the animal and sensuous life expresses the will of God, 
and thus becomes the supreme law of the personal life 
for the normal outworking of the personal destiny ; while 
all special revelations and leadings in the daily life and 
experience are given as needed in the spiritual intui- 
tions. 

As the offspring of God, every man is sent forth to a 
divine career. How, then, shall he fulfil the lofty pur- 
pose of his being except he become a co-worker with the 
Father in the outworking of that exalted destiny, by 
strict observance of the divine law through which alone 
this supreme result is possible ? This being the law of 
the perfect life, and thus the perfect law of life, the ad- 
justment of the personal will and conduct to the law will, 
and of necessity must bring the perfect results in the 
life, and thus the perfect life, of a true and loyal son or 
daughter of God. 

Nothing Arbitrary in the Law. — The demand, it will 
be observed, is not that we surrender the will and 
the sense of moral freedom to the will of God in any 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 47 

arbitrary sense, but that in the exercise of our freedom 
of choice and volition we seek to know and do His will 
or fulfil His purpose in our being, because that purpose 
is the perfection of our being. 

We come into existence as a product and part of a 
divine order and perfect economy; but with the freedom 
of choice and volition. The possibilities of our being are 
boundless : the law and provision for their realization 
are perfect ; it needs but the recognition of this truth 
and personal co-operation with the divine law and provi- 
dence to bring these possibilities to absolute fruition in 
experience. 

It is, then, but the glad surrender of our personal pre- 
dilections and desires in all things, when, in the light of 
the higher wisdom revealed in our own intuitions these 
are found not to be in accord with the divine order and 
purpose, the supreme law of truth and right. 

There was no servile attitude of the Christ toward the 
will of the Father as an arbitrary law, nor any sense of 
compulsion in the expression when he said : " My meat 
it is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his 
work." It was rather his appreciative recognition of the 
Father's infinite good-will and perfect way, and not only 
the willing, but the glad doing of that will and way as 
known ; and in that supreme desire to know and do the 
Father's will, as such, he opened himself to its complete 
revelation in the intuitions of his own soul, which thus 
became divinely illuminated. 

It was in this very loyal attitude of the mind and heart 
of Jesus toward the Father that he found his true and 
normal freedom and supremacy as a son of God, and 



**M 



48 THE OPEN DOOR. 

thus reached the integral harmony and perfection of his 
being. 

There is and can be no perfect freedom save through 
conformity with the laws of being, since these laws, 
which are simply conditions of healthful activity, were 
ordained for the sole purpose of securing this freedom. 

True freedom for man is the uncrippled ability to ex- 
ercise all the powers of his being under normal condi- 
tions and relations. These conditions and relations are 
the necessary workings of a perfect economy, and are 
therefore calculated, and so — using the word in its broad- 
est sense we say — ordained in infinite wisdom to secure 
that perfect result. These organic conditions and re- 
lations, then, constitute the laws of being and reveal the 
infinite wisdom and goodness of the indwelling and over- 
ruling Intelligence and Providence, and thus express the 
will and purpose of God in all things, conformity with 
which necessarily secure the health, freedom, and happi- 
ness of every sentient being. 

In a universal and complicated system of existence 
like that of which we find ourselves a part, there must 
be established relations, and corresponding conditions 
of healthful activity under these relations. These con- 
stitute law and order. Without this there would neces- 
sarily be universal chaos, confusion, and disorder, if, in- 
deed, we could conceive of existence at all under such 
conditions. 

Sin and disease and all the confusion, discord, and mis- 
ery of the world are the necessary results of a violation 
of the beneficent laws of being on the part of man in the 
exercise of his freedom of choice and action. 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPIIY. 49 

The animal in its sensitive life and limited freedom is 
provided with an unerring instinct which leads it to 
spontaneously observe the normal relations and condi- 
tions of healthful being. 

Man, with his higher powers of consciousness and vo- 
lition and the moral freedom which these involve, in his 
spiritual relation to God and his brother man as a moral 
and accountable being, is provided with the spiritual 
function of intuition or direct spiritual insight. If in 
the freedom of his choice and volition he observe and 
follow this intuition it will be to him what instinct is to 
the animal, with this difference ; the animal in a broad 
and general sense yields blindly to his instincts without 
any distinct consciousness of the reason why.* With 
man, on the contrary, intuition is a direct spiritual per- 
ception of truth and right, and his following it is an 
intelligent and voluntary act ; he does so because he 
believes it is the true and right and wishes to do only 
that. In its highest sense, it is because he thinks that it 
is the will and purpose of an all-wise and perfect provi- 
dence, the purpose of his Father in heaven, the fulfil- 
ment of which will alone secure his highest well-being 
and the perfect life. 

He will cultivate and follow his spiritual intuition, 

then, because it " will teach him all things," " guide him . 

into all truth," and will "show him things to come." 

Obedience to its leading exalts his being, lifts him into 

itual freedom, illumination, and power, holds him in 

* In a limited sense there are special exhibitions of some degree of discrim- 
inating intelligence, but this is not the ruling law of obedience to instinct ; it 
is largely, if not wholly, automatic or involuntary. 
4 



50 THE OPEN DOOR. 

unity with God and oneness with the universal order and 
harmony, and thus gives him health and vigor of organ- 
ism, enlightenment of soul, and absolute power of per- 
sonal achievement and mastery. 

If, then, man intuitively chooses the perfect way be- 
cause he recognizes it as the Father's way, and the 
Father's way because it is perfect, that he may be in 
unity with the Father in it, the very consciousness of be- 
ing a voluntary co-worker with God gives him a sense 
of confidence and strength in the righteousness of his 
course and the certainty of success, which renders him 
absolutely invincible. This is the faith referred to by 
Jesus when he said " Have faith in God . . . and 
nothing shall be impossible unto you." 

"We have not only the perfect example and assurance 
of the Master, but the demonstrative experience of saints 
in all ages that we cannot turn to God within, in faith, 
trust, and supreme desire to know and do His will under 
all circumstances, without receiving the immediate in- 
spiration, help, and guidance of His Spirit in our own, 
to its accomplishment. 

It is the animal nature and self-seeking spirit of the 
sensuous life that call for the unrestrained indulgence of 
personal desire, and the gratification of self-will ; while 
the spiritual nature demands truth and righteousness for 
their own sake independent of personal desire. This 
means the impersonal attitude of the soul in the impar- 
tial sharing of universal good, and the spirit of brother- 
hood, sympathy, good-will, and service to all, in opposi- 
tion to the demands of self-will. 

In every life the temptations of the flesh and the de- 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 51 s 

mands of the spirit are thus set one against the other. 
The one must be subordinated to and governed by the 
other before the personal life can be a unit, at one with 
itself and so with the universal harmony. Which shall 
it be ? Which, as the ruling law of the personal life, will s 
make that life perfect, hold it in harmony with the uni- 
versal order, and thus fulfil the divine will and purpose 
in it 1 To ask the question is to answer it. 

The spiritual nature can no more be subordinated to 
and made one with the animal nature and selfish spirit 
of the mere sensuous life, than God in his infinite perfec- 
tion of Being can be subordinated to, harmonized with, 
and ruled by the imperfect life of humanity. The recon- 
ciliation must be in the opposite direction. This is the 
essence of the New Testament message : " God was in 
Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." 

The life of man may be subordinated to, co-ordinated 
with, and ruled by the divine wisdom and goodness, and 
thus brought to perfection and the complete fulfilment 
of its exalted destiny as the offspring of God through 
the voluntary commitment of man himself to this course. 

This unity with God in the personal life is effected, as 
already shown, by, and only by, this very subordination 
of the animal and sensuous life to the law of the spiritual 
nature in its rightful supremacy, by which the functions 
of the lower nature are held to their unperverted activi- 
and legitimate functions in the general economy, 
and so at one with the divine order in that economy. 

This necessary achievement of the free powers of man, 
however, is not effected without a decisive struggle. 

Everything relating to human conduct is to be judged 



52 THE OPEN DOOR. 

from the standpoint of the spiritual nature ; but man has 
to be awakened to the clear recognition of this law, before 
he fully realizes his personal responsibility under it; 
this done, the conflict begins in earnest, and there will 
thenceforth be no permanent peace until the struggle 
ends in the decisive victory of the spiritual nature. 

This struggle may and will be a short and decisive 
one, ending in immediate emancipation and complete 
and permanent victory, if the soul, in the realization of 
its supreme importance, rises to the occasion in deter- 
mined resolution and unshaken faith ; or it may be made 
a prolonged and unsatisfying effort through irresolution 
and distrust. 

Amid the desires of the flesh, the enticements of sense, 
the. temptations of wealth, and the ambitions of the self- 
ish spirit, the soul has the ability to pause and ask : Is 
the pursuit of these things as an end a career worthy of 
a spiritual being and a child of God ? Is it a fulfilment 
of, or departure from his will and purpose in the life ? 
Are the efforts and activities it involves in harmony and 
oneness with his spirit and character ? When this is 
seriously done in the hour of temptation, the higher de- 
mands of the spiritual nature will be heard speaking 
with divine authority in the voice of intuition, calling 
the soul to God and duty. 

The soul has also, at these times, the power of choice 
and the ability to determine whether it prefers to yield 
to the enticements of sense and the temptations of the 
selfish life, or to turn from them and cleave to the spirit 
in its desire after God and the fellowship and achieve- 
ments of the spiritual life. 



THE CHEISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 53 

t ' 

When the soul has reached the point where it prefers 
to let go its hold on personal desire to take hold on God 
in the spiritual life, the charm and spell of sense are then 
and there broken, and the power of the spirit realized ; 
and, though in the hour of temptation the desires of the 
flesh and the enticements of the sensuous life press with 
vehemence their demands, if the soul turn wholly to the 
spiritual nature in its desire for unity with the Father, 
it opens itself at once to the saying power of God in the 
life. The fires of fleshly lusts are immediately extin- 
guished by the pure waters of the spiritual life, the 
enticements of the sensuous nature lose their power and 
tempt no longer ; and the mists and limitations of the 
sense perception and judgment become dissipated in 
the clear light and certainty of intuition. 

This spiritual victory once fairly won, as by the Christ 
in the wilderness, all may then, like him, " return in the 
power of the spirit " and go forward in the work of 
spiritual achievement in the world. All may, like him, 
go in and out from the sphere of divine communion and 
fellowship, clothed in its garment of light and clad in 
its armor and panoply of inspiration and power, to co- 
operate with God in the finishing of His work, the trans- 
figuration and perfection of humanity and the world. 
" I am the door : by me if any man enter in, he shall be 
saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture " — the 
true sustenance and inspiration of life. 

To desire above all things unity with the Father, and 
conformity with His will in all things, will bring the 
certain co-operation of His Spirit and power with and 
into our will and effort at attainment and achievement. 



54 THE OPEN DOOR. 

We thus become illuminated from active contact with 
His Spirit, and admitted and inducted by it into the se- 
crets, mysteries, and mastery of His universe, as fast as 
through loyalty to His Spirit and kingdom we are pre- 
pared for advancing revelation and mastery. " The veil 
of sense, ordinarily opaque, becomes transparent, and 
through it the interior man looks out upon the universe." 

Conflict Inevitable. Victory Possible to All.— It may 
be asked, why should there be any conflict between the 
flesh and the spirit in the sphere of the personal life ? 
why the necessity of the terrible struggle so difficult to 
many in bringing the one into subjection to the other? 
why should not the spontaneous desires of the flesh and 
the ambitions of the sensuous life be indulged and grati- 
fied I why should they exist at all in the constitution of 
man, if their indulgence and gratification are detrimental 
to his best interests ? and why, if planted by God from 
whom all things proceed and all powers receive their 
functions, should the demands of the spiritual nature be 
in conflict with the functions of the flesh and the sensu- 
ous life, even in the highest possible development and 
activity of these functions ? and, finally, why should the 
unrestrained activity of the animal functions be in con- 
flict with the will of God who ordained them ? A brief 
consideration of the strictly human powers and their 
sphere of action, in contrast with those which are ex- 
clusively animal, and dominate the animal life or brute 
creation, will make clear the answer to these questions. 
It will also serve to illustrate the constitutional basis in 
the nature of man for the claim and promise of the 
Christ, as well as for the philosophy involved. 






THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 



The functions of those powers which man has in 
common with the animal are necessarily the same in 
man as in the animal, and as necessary to his existence 
in this world. That which differentiates and distin- 
guishes him, however, from the animal, and makes of 
him a distinct order of being, or kingdom of life above 
the animal plane, is the possession of rational, moral, and 
inspirational powers which qualify him for an endless 
career of unfolding life and progress. These powers are 
the germs of divine attributes, and capable, therefore, of 
infinite development and expansion. They relate man 
to the moral order of a spiritual kingdom and divine 
government, through loyalty to which he enters into and 
partakes of the divine nature. 

The sphere and function of these powers, as such, are 
the pursuit of truth, or perfect knowledge and under- 
standing, the attainment of true wisdom, the elevation 
and perfection of the personal and social life, and the 
exercise of an heroic self-sacrificing spirit of love, 
sympathy, and enthusiasm for humanity. These being 
the real object and possible attainment of man as an 
embodied spiritual being and child of God, they should 
be made the supreme end and aim of his life and effort. 

The body, being the organic instrument of the soul's 
activities in this world, has also its necessities, without 
a proper supply of which the soul itself would be 
crippled in its life-work here. Nevertheless, the physical 
necessities and legitimate demands of the sensuous life 
are so limited in comparison with the necessities and 
demands of the soul, that they necessarily hold a posi- 
tion of secondary importance in the economy of the 



56 THE OPEN DOOR. 

personal life ; hence, to make the higher demands of the 
soul the one supreme interest and importance in the life 
is to establish conditions which will render easy and 
certain the supply of the physical necessities. This will 
give man not only the absolute mastery of himself, but 
also of the outward world and its conditions. " Be not 
therefore anxious, saying, "What shall we eat 1 or, "What 
shall we drink ? or, "Wherewithal shall we be clothed *? 
. . . for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have 
need of all these things. But seek ye first his kingdom 
and his righteousness, and all these things shall be 
added unto you." 

Such is the normal and legitimate life of a child of 
God, though incarnate in a physical body with senses 
which relate him vitally to the outward world of mate- 
rial laws and conditions, and which necessitate also the 
possession and activity of strictly animal functions. 

The human body, however, differing in form and 
structure from the animal, is specifically constructed 
with reference to the development and controlling ac- 
tivity of the higher human powers, and not for the unre- 
strained indulgence and activity of the animal functions. 
This order and relations of the constitutional powers 
cannot therefore be ignored and violated without moral 
degeneration and perversion of physical function. All 
the miseries and evils of the world are traceable to this 
very violation and perversion. 

A legitimate degree of animal activity is an obvious 
physiological necessity to the proper development, re- 
pair, health, and vigor of the human body. But it is 
equally obvious, from the superior structure of the brain 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 57 

and nervous system over that of the animal's — as the or- 
ganic seat of the higher human powers — that all accumu- 
lating energy of the vital functions is for, and should 
be expended only in, the higher activities and rational 
enjoyments of the spiritual nature, not in the sensual in- 
dulgence of animal desire as an end. Conservation of 
energy in the animal functions for its more profitable 
expenditure in the higher intellectual and social activi- 
ties of the nobler human powers is the law of the animal 
life in the human economy. 

The higher powers of the soul, though embodied in 
flesh, and because thus embodied and using the body as 
the physical instrument of their activities, are designed 
for conquest and mastery in and over the laws and con- 
ditions of the physical world. The animal powers are 
for the service of the body, under the direction of the 
nobler powers of the soul for which the body is con- 
structed, not to control it to the ends of animal pleas- 
ure, nor to expend energy that belongs to the higher 
powers. 

Without the observance of this lav/ in the economy of 
the personal life the conquest of the outward world 
to which the soul is called will be impossible. The con- 
quest must begin in the personal life by the perfect ad- 
justment of the soul to the divine law of its being before 
there can be development and accumulation of power for 
the mastery of environment. 

The organisms of animals, on the other hand, having 
no intellectual and moral natures to subserve, are con- 
structed with direct reference to the unrestrained indul- 
gence and activity cf their impulses and propensities. 



58 THE OPEN DOOR. 

This renders such indulgence compatible with their 
health and well-being 1 , which cannot, for the reason 
given, be possibly true of man. 

Self-indulgence, self-seeking, and self-will constitute 
the law of the animal nature, fear being practically the 
only restraining influence. 

Sensation and instinct constitute the life of the animal 
and prescribe the sphere and limitations of its motives, 
activities, and consciousness, above which it cannot rise. 

Pleasure and pain in a physical sense are the animal 
standards of good and evil. That which gives pleasure 
per se is the good which it instinctively seeks, and that 
which gives pain or discomfort is the only evil it knows 
and seeks to avoid, with no sense of moral quality in 
either. 

Having no moral sense of right and wrong, as such, 
the unrestrained gratification of the appetites and pro- 
pensities brings no inward protest, shame, or sense of 
degradation as in man, in whom spiritual intuition 
never ceases to lift up her voice in warning and reproof. 

The selfish spirit and its law of self-seeking and self- 
indulgence belong to and spring from the animal nat- 
ure, in man as in the brute, and are essential, within their 
legitimate sphere, to the performance of the animal 
functions, desire being the only stimulus to their activ- 
ity. It is only when they are not controlled and held to 
their proper limitations by the nobler powers of reason 
and intuition, and when the law and selfish spirit of the 
animal are allowed to dominate the soul in its personal, 
social, and industrial life, that mischief is thereby 
wrought in these activities and relations. 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 59 * 

The law of the spiritual nature is love, chastity, tem- 
perance, and the self-sacrificing spirit for the good 
of others. The love, not of pleasure as an end, but of 
duty, and pleasure only in duty, which seeks not to be min- 
istered unto but to minister, and rejoices in the oppor- 
tunity of service, the love of truth and right for their own 
sake, independent of personal considerations, is the high 
law of the spiritual life, the law of God in the life. 

The animal functions in man being given to meet the 
necessities of the physical body and keep it in repair as 
an instrument for the higher intellectual and spiritual 
activities, their indulgence should be held to the limits 
of these necessities. The demands of the spiritual nat- 
ure and the subordination of the animal activities to 
these demands, and so in their proper limitation co-or- 
dinated with them, is, we repeat, the divine law of the 
personal life or will and purpose of God in the life. 

The Two Planes of Consciousness.—" Now, that is not 
first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and af- 
terward that which is spiritual." Evolution as a univer- 
sal law in the development of organic life furnishes a 
key to the solution of this very important j>roblem. A 
brief consideration of the two planes of consciousness 
made necessary by the evolutionary process in the un- 
folding of the soul's powers, first, on the primary plane 
of the sensuous life, and afterward on the higher plane 
of the spiritual life, will account for the seeming con- 
flict, and its temporary necessity, between the flesh and 
the spirit. 

It is, then, because the rational and moral powers are 
first awakened to activity in their relation to the outward 



60 THE OPEN DOOR. 

world through the physical senses that their primary 
education and development are necessarily on the plane 
of the sensuous life, and thus under the law and domin- 
ion of the selfish spirit of the animal nature. 

Before the soul has awakened to the consciousness of 
its spiritual being and relations, its attention and desires 
are absorbed in the things of the sensuous life, because it 
knows no other. 

Man, in this stage of his development, is practically 
but an intellectual and moral animal and so absorbed in 
the pursuit of sensuous good that the innate demands of 
the spiritual nature are neither realized nor understood. 
Not, therefore, until the evolution of these powers has 
attained a sufficient level of development and degree of 
discipline to recognize the intrinsic value of truth and 
right for their own sake, independent of their subser- 
vience to selfish ends, does the conflict begin between the 
demands of the animal and the spiritual natures. From 
that time until the soul is fully awakened to a realizing 
sense of its true nature and relations as a child of God, 
and is unreservedly committed to the true life of this 
higher relationship, in which the animal nature becomes 
subordinated to the spiritual, the conflict will continue. 
It ceases, however, when this personal adjustment is 
fully made, the true life entered upon, and the spiritual 
nature becomes permanently enthroned in organic su- 
premacy in the personal life, co-ordinating all things 
with itself. 

The functions and activities of the sensuous nature, so 
essential to our relations with the outward world, and to 
the discipline of experience to be derived therefrom, are 



THE CHKISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 61 

not suspended or crippled by the soul's activities on the 
higher plane of the spiritual life, but subordinated to 
and co-ordinated with them. 

The spiritual life is not, in itself, antagonostic to the 
sensuous life in its normal activities, but to its excessive 
indulgence and perversions only. 

The spiritual nature, by relating man to the kingdom 
of God and the moral law — the empire of truth and right- 
eousness — and opening him to inspiration from the Di- 
vine, when brought into its rightful supremacy in the 
personal life, holds the spontaneous choice and action of 
the soul to the divine order. As God is in harmony with 
every department of His own creation, when the personal 
life is finally adjusted to the divine order it will be in 
harmony with God, and with itself and all things in God. 

The sensuous activities being co-ordinated with the 
spiritual, the harmony and true freedom of the entire be- 
ing are secured. Reverse this order, giving the suprem- 
acy to flesh and sense, and we have the opposite result, 
to which universal experience gives witness. 

In this is seen both the reason and nature of the con- 
flict and the necessity of a spiritual awakening and read- 
justment of the personal life to the divine order before 
man can enter upon the true, integral, and victorious life 
of a son of God in the flesh. " Verily, verily, I say unto 
thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the king- 
dom of God." "That which is born of the flesh is 
flesh ; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." 
This does not refer to the birth of a new nature, but to 
the awakening to the consciousness and activity of the 
spiritual nature, his from the first. 



62 THE OPEN DOOR. 

Birth of a New Power.— In the co-ordination of the 
objective and sensuous life and consciousness with the 
higher spiritual nature in its active supremacy, a new 
power is bom in the soul, of which the sensuous nature 
in its highest development on the objective plane gives 
no hint or promise. 

This is the power of so rising at will, out of and 
above the circle of physical sensation, and the limitations 
of sense perception and sense consciousness, by an act of 
mental concentration, that for the time they are practical- 
ly dissipated, being wholly subordinated to the focalized 
sense of pure spiritual being, and the flood of interior 
illumination thus induced. 

In this high state of spiritual consciousness from 
inward concentration, the power to transfer the sense 
of perfect health, which dominates this state, into the 
circle of bodily functions, is absolute. This translation 
of spiritual harmony and power into physical function 
results in the immediate dissipation of all diseased ac- 
tion and debility, giving the full sense of restored health 
and vigor, which is as permanent as it is immediate and 
gratifying. 

The ability also to transfer the interior illumination to 
the physical organs of sense perception, vastly extending 
their penetration and range of action, is equally potent, 
so that the whole inward man in its realized supremacy 
may be brought forward to full external activity in the 
sphere of the objective life. 

In a true and loyal life this blending by special effort, 
at proper seasons, of the two planes of consciousness be- 
comes in due time the permanent condition which se- 



THE CHEISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 63 

cures the final state and perfect life of spiritual illumi- 
nation and supremacy in the flesh. 

The first step in this high effort is the transfer, by an 
act of abstraction and inward concentration, all thought, 
desire, and attention from the external and objective to 
the interior and higher plane of the spiritual con- 
sciousness. If, however, this is attempted before the 
true spiritual consciousness is evolved and established 
through the spiritual adjustment of the personal life 
above referred to, failure will be the probable re- 
sult. Power to do this with safety and certainty, it 
must be remembered, is born of the spiritual conscious- 
ness, in the co-ordination of the outward life to its su- 
premacy. This co-ordinated life of spiritual supremacy 
is open to and attainable by all who will ; by all who 
are ready to adjust themselves to the divine order, by 
willing to do the Father's will as it is manifested to 
them. And when attained the act of introversion, or 
transfer of the soul's activities from the objective to 
the spiritual plane, becomes an easy and delightful 
experience. Then, from the deep centres of being and 
the interior heights of supreme spiritual realization, the 
soul may in turn transfer, by an act, not of will but of 
faith, this realized power and supremacy of spirit down 
into all the normal activities of the external life, exalting 
them to the highest degree of efficiency and perfection. 

We say faith, not will. By faith we mean that perfect 
commitment of the whole soul to a given purpose in tho 
intuitive assurance and absolute certainty of realizing 
the desired result, a certainty which admits of no pos- 
sible doubt. 



64 THE OPEN DOOR. 

Faith is the active expression of intuition, as will is 
of desire, and holds the same place in the interior life 
that will holds in the objective. Faith is that supreme 
power of the soul, born of the spiritual consciousness, 
which when the soul lives and acts from the high plane 
of spiritual supremacy " speaks and it is done, commands 
and it stands fast " in the entire sphere of the personal 
activities. 

In this state of inward concentration and spiritual 
power, faith converges all the mental powers in one united 
action, so that when the attention is centred upon the 
body or any portion of it, for any legitimate specific re- 
sult, the law and power of this action are absolute. The 
entire body and its conditions are thus brought under 
the perfect control of the mind. 

When this mastery is fully attained by the soul over 
its own organism, it is enabled to exert a correspond- 
ing energy for good over other organisms, and gradu- 
ally to extend its power over all the conditions of its 
external environment, until the entire mastery a#d con- 
trol of them is achieved. 

Some of these results are partially and imperfectly ob- 
tained through the psychological states of hypnotism, 
artificial somnambulism, and trance ; but these, remark- 
able as they are, are abnormal and temporary conditions, 
and can never be made the basis of perfect and perma- 
nent results. Neither can they be made the means of 
attaining the permanent spiritual consciousness and 
transcendency of power here suggested. 

The normal and complete evolution of the spiritual 
consciousness is effected only by the free act of the soul 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 65 

in personal adjustment to the law of the spiritual life, 
the entire co-ordination of the personal will with the 
divine and universal will. This calls for no surrender 
of the objective and external consciousness, but only its 
subordination to and co-ordination with the higher con- 
sciousness of spiritual being- and relationship. 

Neither does it require the submission of the personal 
will to the will and controlling influence of another per- 
sonality, whether in the body as in hypnotism, or out of 
the body as in mediumship, nor to a body of men called 
a church. 

In the supremacy and power of the spiritual conscious- 
ness thus normally reached, the soul realizes its identity 
of nature and unity of will with the Father, and knowing 
intuitively what is right, in any given act, puts forth its 
energies in the absolute certainty of effecting the aimed- 
for result or its equivalent, because it has the assured 
sanction and co-operation of God in the effort. It is, 
therefore, we repeat and emphasize, when the spiritual 
consciousness or sense of life in God is permanently 
established, that the power is readily acquired of with- 
drawing at will from the objective plane and sphere 
of sense, and focalizing the mental powers upon the 
psychic plane of interior vision and psychometric action. 
With this comes the ability to control physical sensation 
and translate the supreme sense of healthful tranquillity 
and power which dominates the spiritual consciousness, 
into corresponding physical states. 

Physical Sensation versus Spiritual Feeling, — To the 
strictly objective and sensuous consciousness and un- 
derstanding, all thought of good and evil is associated 
5 



(50 THE OPEN DOOR. 

with physical sensation, the sense of pleasure and 
pain. 

In the higher spiritual consciousness and understand- 
ing, however, physical sensation has no place or recog- 
nition. Joy and sadness indeed are felt, but these, on 
the plane of the spiritual life, are purely mental and 
affectional states entirely independent of physical sensa- 
tion. Eeeling, in the high spiritual sense, like under- 
standing, belongs exclusively to the soul, as sensation in 
the physical sense belongs to the body. 

On the plane of the sensuous life, however, in which 
the majority of men are living, feeling and sensation 
have been so blended in the consciousness that they 
have become identified in the thought of the world. In 
this experience the emphasis has been so placed upon 
the physical sense of things that as a consequence the 
sensibility of the finely strung nervous organism of man 
has become so unduly exalted that it is abnormally 
sensitive to both physical and mental impressions, and 
thus easily deranged and made to suffer from disease 
and pain. "While sensation is thus made the practical 
basis of good and evil, man will continue to fall captive 
to the enticements of sense, and remain correspondingly 
subject to physical derangement and suffering. • 

In the awakening and permanent supremacy of the 
spiritual consciousness, the emphasis in thought is with- 
drawn from physical sensation as the basis of good and 
evil, and placed where it belongs, on the moral plane of 
right and wrong, per se. 

The soul then becomes so absorbed in the nobler 
activities of the spiritual life and the pure enjoyments 



THE CHEISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 67 

and delights of its higher communion and fellowship, 
that the enticements of the sensuous life lose their 
power. The physical sense of life becomes subordinated 
to the spiritual sense of being, in which sensation and 
physical good as an end have no place. 

All abnormal sensibility rapidly disappears and phys- 
ical sensation sinks to its subordinate sphere in the hu- 
man economy. 

Susceptibility to physical impressions and all disease- 
producing influences from external sources, including 
malaria and contagion, also disturbance from mental im- 
pressions, is thus reduced to its minimum. And what is 
of more importance still, the reflex influence of the higher 
mental energy thus evolved in the spiritual conscious- 
ness of supremacy and power so exalts the vital power 
of resistance to all disturbing influences, that disease 
and physical pain become next to impossible. Or should 
they, from injury or any cause be induced, they are easily 
and promptly overcome and healed by a special act of 
mind to this end. 

The physical body, it must be remembered, is the or- 
ganic instrument of the soul in its active relations with 
the outward world. "When, therefore, the sensuous activi- 
ties are wholly subordinated to and co-ordinated with the 
higher activities of the spiritual nature in its supremacy, 
the body becomes a perfect physical expression of the 
dominant state of spiritual consciousness and power. 

It is then held not only in a condition of perpetual 
health and the vigor of abundant life, but is caught up at 
times to share the soul's ecstatic thrill of enraptured 
thought and feeling in those high and holy seasons of 



68 THE OPEN DOOR. 

special communion and fellowship with the divine and 
heavenly to which it is admitted. In other words, the 
most exalted states of spiritual realization may be, and 
at times are, translated into corresponding physical con- 
ditions, as illustrated in the transfiguration of Jesus on the 
mount, the shining face of Moses and of Stephen, and of 
great saints in all the ages. Man thus rises to walk in 
high communion and royal companionship with the 
master spirits and illuminati of the ages, the ascended 
" spirits of just men made perfect." 

The ecstasy of pure and exalted feeling awakened in the 
soul by the joyous life of divine communion and heavenly 
fellowship being translated into corresponding physical 
states, becomes sensation, but of a vastly different quality 
from that generated from the vibration of physical im- 
pressions. Having a spiritual origin, it is always pure, 
chaste and heavenly, and awakens corresponding phys- 
ical expression and outward manifestation. 

"When the outward and inward planes of consciousness 
are thus permanently co-ordinated, the ability to with- 
draw at will from the objective plane and the sphere of 
physical sensation, as previously intimated, is compara- 
tively an easy matter, and readily acquired. 

By entering into the realization of the spiritual life, 
and his higher relations to God and the spiritual king- 
dom, man does not, by any means, lose his practical rela- 
tions with the external world. He simply acquires the 
mastery of his body and of his relations to the outward 
world through it, by the realized transcendency of his 
spiritual being in these relations. 

The objective consciousness and the use of the physi- 



THE CHKISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 69 

cal senses will ever remain a necessity to these relations 
and to the soul's activities in them. By the opening of 
the spiritual consciousness of being and relationship, 
however, and the illumination and transcendency of spir- 
itual power it confers, the sensuous powers take on a 
higher and intuitive action, and man uses them all the 
more effectively for the accompanying intuition. 

The psychometric or soul-measuring power is awak- 
ened to activity by the opening of the sphere of divine 
communion, and it is the spontaneous working of this 
purely psychic function which gives to the faculties their 
intuitive action on the external or objective plane. 

In the complete withdrawal of the mind's action, how- 
ever, from the external plane and the sphere of sensa- 
tion, the soul is able, from the higher centres of spirit- 
ual power and illumination thus reached, to exercise the 
independent psychic vision in penetrating the secrets of 
Nature and the processes of life ; and also to exert occult 
power in works of beneficence and service to men. Per- 
fect control of the conditions of its own body, and the 
ability to heal others, is one of the occult powers thus 
attained. 

The interior or psychic vision thus opened, becomes 
practically omniscient in any one specific direction in 
which the attention is fully turned. 

The final state of perfect and permanent illumina- 
tion, the highest possible earthly condition, is reached 
when, through the permanent co-ordination of the out- 
ward with the inward life, the two planes of conscious- 
ness become at length blended, so that the occult pow- 
ers of the soul are brought specifically to bear in the 



70 THE OPEN DOOR. 

practical every day work of the external life. This was 
true of the Master as it was to a high degree of the 
Apostles, and also in the experience of some of the mys- 
tics, the seers and prophets of all ages and peoples. 
The divine Magia is thus opened unto man, and he be- 
comes a real and legitimate Thaumaturgus, or wonder- 
worker, the miraculous man, or true spiritual adept and 
hierophant.* 



Conclusion. — It is as a spiritual being with rational, 
moral and inspirational powers, and an indestructible 
spiritual organism that man is a child of God in phys- 
ical embodiment. It is in and through this spiritual 
nature that he is organically related to the eternal reali- 
ties^f a spiritual kingdom, and the moral order and law 
of a Divine Government. 

It is because man is interiorly, vitally and perma- 
nently related to the kingdom of God, and a transcendent 
sphere of divine communion and fellowship, that he 
holds a normal and legitimate position of transcendency 
over the physical order, and the laws and conditions of 
the physical world to which he is externally and tempo- 
rarily related through the body and its senses. 

Though beginning his conscious existence on the 
plane of the senses, and in the sphere of the animal life, 
man as man in his essential and permanent nature is 
from birth a spiritual being and child of God. 

* For a full analysis of the higher psychic and occult powers of the soul, 
and of the specific laws and conditions of their cultivation and successful ex- 
ercise, see M The Way, the Truth, and the Life. A Handbook of Christian 
Theosophy, Healing, and Psychic Culture," by the author. 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 71 

The entire race partakes of the one life, and is there- 
fore an organic unity and solidarity. This life being 
the immediate emanation of God constitutes the basis of 
universal brotherhood. 

Each individual member of the race partaking of the 
one essential life represents in his personal career the 
capabilities and possibilities of all other individuals, and 
so becomes a type of the race in its general career and 
development as a solidarity. 

Each individual, as we know, begins his existence and 
career as an individual, in the ignorance and helpless- 
ness of infancy, a mere sensuous organism of animal life, 
in which the germs of the human faculties exist in em- 
bryo. 

From this rude beginning the soul rises slowly in in- 
telligence, and comes to a rational understanding and a 
sense of personal responsibility through the gradual un- 
folding of the intellectual and moral powers, under the 
stimulus of sensuous impressions, contact with mind, and 
the press of physical necessity. 

In like condition the race life, as such — of which the in- 
dividual is a type — began its existence on the low plane 
of savage animality, the higher human powers gradually 
unfolding through the discipline of experience, under 
the stimulus and press of necessity which forced them 
into action, until, through the development thus secured, 
it was lifted to the level of the full human consciousness, 
I to the sense of still higher possibilities. 

From that time, man was practically ready for the 
higher spiritual education and development which 
this sense of nobler possibilities called for and sug- 



72 THE OPEN DOOR. 

gested. From that time, also, aspiring souls began the 
earnest search for the key or secret of attaining the 
higher life of supremacy and freedom which this pro- 
phetic instinct demanded. Out of this seeking has 
sprung all the religions, philosophies, sciences, and arts 
of the world. 

When, finally, the full secret and law of entering into 
the perfect life of spiritual freedom and supremacy was 
reached, disclosed, and demonstrated in the experience 
of the Christ, he proclaimed at once, and with the au- 
thority of a divine sanction and insight, that the time 
was fulfilled, and the kingdom of God was at hand, or 
its door opened unto men. 

He pointed out the mistake which men had made in 
seeking its realization in and through external condi- 
tions and measures, and bade them, after his victorious 
example, turn within and enter through the door which 
he had found and opened in the inner life: "For 
behold, the kingdom of God is within you." " He that 
followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have 
the light of life." 

Through that door of the inner life he assured them 
if they entered they should " be saved, and go in and 
out and find pasture " — the true sustenance and the true 
inspiration of life. " By me if any man enter in," etc., 
" I am the light of the world," etc. Only as an Example 
and Instructor for all the world could he be the light of 
the world. Only as an Exemplar and Teacher of the cer- 
tain way to the perfect life for every member of the hu- 
man race could he be called the Saviour of the race. 

If he taught and exemplified that which was impos- 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 73 

sible of realization in the personal experience of a single 
human soul, or any class of men, then he could not in 
any true sense be called " the Saviour of the race," nor 
"the light of the world." 

"Byrne," by his instruction and his example, "if any 
man enter in, he shall be saved, and go in and out," etc. 
The Master, by precept and example, had led the way to 
and opened the door, and himself entered in, and could 
" go in and out," and was thus the living example and 
demonstration of " the way, the truth, and the life " for 
all. Each one following his example must of his own 
free choice and will also enter in, as did his great Exem- 
plar. 

The door opened in the soul of Jesus, and which by 
his teaching and example is opened in other souls, is 
the true spiritual understanding and consciousness. 
This is the only possible door of entrance into the reali- 
zation of the kingdom of God, or the transcendent life 
of spiritual supremacy, illumination and power. 

The true spiritual understanding opened in the soul 
of Jesus, and by his teaching and example 'opened in 
other souls, is the understanding of God as pure Spirit- 
ual Being, immanent and transcendent, absolute in wis- 
dom, goodness and providence, and the immediate Fa- 
ther of men. 

The true spiritual consciousness which this under- 
standing gives is the consciousness of "our own spiritual 
being, living in vital relationship with God as our heav- 
enly Father, partaking of His essential nature and at- 
tributes, and thus entitled by a divine birthright, as 
children of a perfect Being and Government, to all the 



74 THE OPEN DOOK. 

immunities, privileges and fellowships which pertain to 
the kingdom or reign of God as our Father. In other 
words, it is the consciousness that we are spiritual be- 
ings and children of God, though embodied in flesh, and 
that as such it is not only our privilege but our duty to 
assert and achieve absolute supremacy in and over all 
the conditions of materiality in our relations with the 
physical world. And further, that we cannot dwell in 
conscious communion and unity of spirit, or will and 
purpose with the Father without asserting and achiev- 
ing our spiritual supremacy, and thus attaining the per- 
fect life of spiritual freedom, illumination and mastery, 
through partaking of the Father's nature, or our one- 
ness with Him in the divine supremacy and perfec- 
tion of His Being in and over all these relations of ex- 
ternality and environment. " The Spirit itself beareth 
witness with our spirit, that we are children of God : 
and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint 
heirs with Christ ; if so be that we suffer with him, that 
we may be also glorified together." Those who would 
share with the Christ in the supremacy of the Spirit, 
must share with him in the subjection of the flesh. 

This spiritual understanding and consciousness is the 
door of entrance into all this divine realization which is 
the rightful heritage of the sons and daughters of God. 
This door is opened in the Christ teaching and example, 
and is free of access unto all. " By me, if any man en- 
ter in, he shall be saved," saved to his full inheritance, 
the absolute realization of all his divine possibilities as 
a son of God. 

The door of entrance into the kingdom having been 



THE CHRISTIAN THE0S0PHY. 75 

fully opened to human life and entered by the supreme 
Man and Brother of men, is henceforth open and free to 
all who choose to follow him. The entering in is a mat- 
ter of personal choice. 

The entering in is the reconciliation or at-one-ment of 
man with God ; the unity of the human will with the Di- 
vine Will. It is the laying down of the spirit of self and 
the glad yielding to the law of the spiritual life, which 
is loyalty to the nature, character and government of the 
Father, and which is possible only through a warm and 
tender love of the Father, awakened by the deep con- 
sciousness and realization of this diving relationship. 

In the nature of things man cannot enter into con- 
scious communion and unity with God as Father, with- 
out the positive realization of his divine sonship and the 
full spirit of loyalty to that relationship, springing from 
the supreme love of his heart for the Father in the grate- 
ful sense of identity of nature with Him. 

Xo soul can have a deep sense of the holiness and per- 
fection of the Father's nature and character, and of his 
own relation to Him as the child of His love and provi- 
dence, without becoming at once loyal in heart to that 
nature and relation. 

The man who does not recognize and appreciate the 
superior wisdom and goodness of the All-Perfect One to 
his own, and desire above all things to be guided by, 
enter into, and become one with Him in them, has not 
the right attitude before God, has not the true spirit of 
divine sonship. Like Simon Magus his " heart is not 
right in the sight of God." 

The entrance through the door into the kingdom of 



76 THE OPEN DOOR. 

God and the possession of its treasures of wisdom and 
knowledge, the realization of its spiritual supremacy, 
illumination and freedom of communion and fellowship 
with the Father as his child, is effected, as we have 
shown, only by the adjustment of the personal life, or 
the will and desires of the heart, with the law of the 
Divine Nature, to which we have so fully referred. 

When this is once fully effected, as with the Master, 
we have his demonstrative experience as well as his 
authoritative assurance, corroborated by the subsequent 
experience of many, that we may then " go in and out " as 
we will, or need! That is, we may enter from time to 
time into the sphere of divine communion for seasons of 
spiritual refreshment, and receive renewal of strength 
and wisdom for external mastery and achievement. 

That sphere of the divine and absolute touches man at 
the centre of his own being. The throne room and audi- 
ence chamber of the Divine Presence is the inner sanctu- 
ary of the human soul, where the table of divine com- 
munion and fellowship ever awaits the participation of 
the conscious life of every man. " When thou prayest, 
enter into thy closet," the inner secret chamber of the 
soul, " and when thou hast shut to the door," the door of 
the external life, which is sense, "pray to thy Father 
which is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret 
shall reward thee openly." " Know ye not that ye are a 
temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in 
you ? " 

The invitation stands open to all men everywhere, high 
or low, noble or ignoble, learned and unlearned alike, to 
enter full and free into this divine communion and fellow- 



THE CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY. 77 

ship ; and having once found blessed entrance, to go in 
and out from that inward Shekinah of the divine unveil- 
ing, cleansed by its baptismal fire, and illuminated with 
its light and blessedness to an ever opening and expand- 
ing life of external activity and achievement. 

Thus did the Christ or Great Exemplar go in and out 
and achieve the victorious life of an embodied spiritual 
being and Son of God, a life of spiritual freedom and 
supremacy in and over the flesh, and finally the mastery 
of the forces of life and of death. 

This secret of the Christ was partially grasped by a 
few of his time, and the mighty power and achievement 
of the Apostolic Brotherhood was the result. 

The masses, however, blinded by the power of tradi- 
tional prejudice, remained the blind followers of the 
blind, and leaders and followers alike stumbled and fell 
by the way. 

The same thing followed the Apostolic movement. 
When, in the early history of the Christian Church, in 
the pride and pomp of its grasping greed of power, it 
usurped authority over the reason and conscience of 
men in the name of Christ, the sublime secret was lost, 
and the power and gifts of the spirit departed from her 
altars. A few only within her walls, and scattered 
through the centuries, the real mystics of the Church, 
have held the secret and entered into its power. 

These, however, have generally been ostracised, per- 
secuted, subjected to the fiendish tortures of the Inquisi- 
tion, and often to the martyr's stake, by the Church it- 
self. 

That secret is now being restored to the world ; yet, 



78 THE OPEN DOOR. 

as of old, the blinding prejudice of an agnostic material- 
ism on the one hand — within as well as outside the 
Church — and the dogmatism of traditional authority and 
superstition on the other, will refuse to listen or be con- 
vinced. 

Nevertheless, vast numbers of waiting souls, already 
emancipated from both priestly authority and material- 
istic nihilism, are ready and eagerly looking for the liv- 
ing word of power that shall touch the sympathetic vi- 
bratory chord of their being and set them free. 

These will gladly recognize and grasp the key pre- 
sented, and thus become the evangels of the now dawn- 
ing era of spiritual enlightenment and power, whose 
breaking glories already rest in light and beauty upon a 
few awakened souls, the advance heralds of an enfran- 
chised race. 



:i 



PART II. 

THE TEACHING OF JESUS EPITOMIZED, AND HIS 
FUNDAMENTAL DOCTEINE CONTRASTED WITH THE 
BASIC DOCTEINES OF THE OTHER GREAT RELIG- 
IONS. 






The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship 
the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him. 

God is Spirit : and they that worship him must worship in spirit and 
in truth. 

Be not ye called Rabbi : for one is your Master, even Christ ; and all ye 
are brethren. 

And call no man your father upon the earth : for one is your Father, 
which is in heaven. 

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father Which is in heaven is per- 
fect.— Jesus the Christ. 






THE CHEIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 

11 God is Spirit : and they that worship him must worship him in spirit 
and in truth ; for the Father seeketh such to worship him." 

In these oracular and authoritative words, the Christ 
gives his conception and understanding* of the nature 
of God and His relation to man, and of man's relation to 
God and his privilege under this relation. God is Su- 
preme Spirit, Absolute Being, and the immediate Father 
of men, desiring them to "worship him in spirit and 
truth ; " that is, to love, adore, reverence and confide in 
him as Father. Man, as man, has the inherent capacity 
to spiritually commune with, and know God in very 
truth as " Our Father in heaven." The specific thought 
of God is of His infinite supremacy and perfection 
of Being, Fatherhood and Providence. The specific 
thought of man is of his spiritual nature and possibili- 
ties of divine perfection, as the child of the infinite Love 
and Providence. 

As an embodied spiritual being and child of God he 
holds potentially in his essential nature the attributes 
of his divine Parent. He has, therefore, the inherent 
capacity as a child, of unfolding into all the supremacy 
and perfection of being which characterize the Father. 
' Ye therefore shall be perfect as your heavenly Father 
is perfect," was the Christ interpretation of the purpose 
and providence of God for men as His children. 
6 






82 THE OPEN DOOR. 

This conception of God and man is the key to the true 
interpretation and understanding of the teaching and 
life of Jesus. There can be no practical application of 
his example and teaching, except as thus interpreted; 
and no correct understanding of his doctrine and Theos- 
ophy, save in the light of this primal and central truth. 
Let us, then, at the risk of some repetition of thought 
brought forth and hinted at in Part First, briefly and 
more specifically glance at the essential teaching with 
this key of interpretation. 

God as Supreme Spirit and Essential Being is both 
immanent and transcendent, absolute in wisdom, good- 
ness and providence; "In all, through all, and over 
all." As the immanent God He is the essential life of 
Nature and man, " clothing the grass of the field," and 
" bringing forth meat in due season " for all His creat- 
ures. " In him we live, move, and have our being." As 
transcendent Being, He is Creator, Preserver and Ruler 
of the Universe, and the immediate Father of human 
spirits. His all-wise and beneficent care and providence 
over all His works are so universal and specific, that not 
a sparrow falls to the ground without His notice, and 
the very hairs of our heads are numbered before him. 
" Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of be- 
fore ye ask him." 

As pure Spiritual Being, He must of necessity trans- 
cend the universe in which He is manifest, and which 
exists and can exist only in His infinite life, as certainly 
as the human spirit transcends the body in which it is 
manifest, and which exists and is held only in the in- 
dividual life. 



THE CHRIST DOCTRHSTE EPITOMISED. 83 

As both immanent and transcendent Being* and the 
immediate Father of men, there is no place for nor ne 
of any lesser and intermediary gods for the work 
creation and providence, as held in some of the old 
conceptions. Neither is there need or place for a 
mediating hierarchy or supernal orders between God a 
oian, through which man is to find access to the Fatt 
ind receive consideration at His hands. Any assuir 
tion of this, ecclesiastically or otherwise, is despo 
isurpation and Antichrist. The only mediation pos 
ble under the relation of God with men, is the he 
sriiich one inspired and sympathetic soul can give, as 
3rother or sister, to a needy and less inspired one ; or 
i body of brethren to a needy brother or an unfortum 
;lass, and this only in the true spirit of brotherho< 
Chis was the character of the mediatorial work of t 
Christ, which, being perfect, was supreme over all oth< 
n helping men into unity with the Father. 

The Doctrine not Original with Jesus. — As an abstrr 
>roposition the doctrine of God's Fatherhood and ma 
>rotherhood, the spiritual nature of God, and a higl 
ife of intelligence and power possible to man as His 
)ffspring, are not peculiar to Christianity and did not 
>riginate with Jesus. What was special to him was his 
leeper insight and higher understanding of Spiritual 
Being, of the nature and character of God in His Father- 
lood and Providence, of the spiritual nature and the 
mmediate transcendent possibilities of man as His off- 
spring, and the realization and personal demonstration 
)f the truth of his conception in experience. 

In his specific application of the deeper conception of 



S4 • THE OPEN DOOR. 

the nature of God and man, held by him, not only as an 
ideal but a practical basis of faith and effort, it became 
as demonstrated in his own life, a power in his ministry 
which has dwarfed the ministry of all other teachers 
into comparative littleness. In his deep sense of God, 
not only in His transcendency of Being and Fatherhood, 
but of His indwelling spiritual Presence and Power, he 
taught, as no other Seer had taught, the certain possi- 
bility of bringing to fruition in universal experience the 
perfect life of spiritual supremacy and divine realization 
in the flesh, here and now. In specifically emphasiz- 
ing this assured possibility as the ideal and basis of 
all true faith and effort, he lifted his conception and doc- 
trine, we repeat, infinitely above and differentiated it 
from that of all previous teachers. 

In thus repeatedly emphasizing this specific feature 
of the Lord Christ's Teaching and Example, which distin- 
guished him from and raised him above all others, it is 
not for the purpose of belittling the consecrated labors 
of other Seers and Prophets — who were true to their 
highest inspiration — nor to exalt the Christ as a special 
object of hero-worship, but simply to call attention to 
the fuller, larger and more efficient ideal and method, as 
such, attained and presented by him. 

A man's ideal of possible attainment is necessarily 
his basis of faith and effort. "Whether true or false, the 
ideal of possible attainment by man on earth, presented 
by Jesus, was certainly vastly above and beyond that 
held by any other religious system of the world. His 
own life, as presented by the record, was itself the practi- 
cal demonstration of the gospel he preached. 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 85 

He did not, as does Brahminism, consider the outward 
world as " niaya," or illusion, but recognized the divine 
activity of the Father's indwelling presence in all its 
actual processes. Instead, therefore, of seeking final 
absorption in Brahm or Deity, he sought rather to bring 
forth the potential attributes of the Father's indwelling 
Spirit to full and complete organic embodiment in His 
children. His ideal man was a divine incarnation, the 
Word, Logos, or Divine Ideal and Purpose, made flesh in 
universal experience ; nor did he, as does Buddhism, 
consider objective existence an evil to be escaped from, 
after many physical incarnations, through the destruc- 
tion of all desire, and entrance into Nirvana — a state of 
spiritual repose and eternal suspension of all external 
personal activities. He sought, rather, to enthrone in 
active manifestation the kingdom of God in the indi- 
vidual and social life of men on earth, as it is in heaven, 
and thus make the objective world a paradise of beauty, 
perfection and delight, from which man should be trans- 
lated to celestial spheres and rise through ascending 
orders of unfolding life forever. 

The older teachings, it will thus be seen, did not mean 
what Jesus meant by " Spirit," nor by God as " Father," 
or the divine sonship of man. A few had caught 
glimpses of the deeper significance of those features of 
the divine conception emphasized by Jesus, and made 
by him the specific basis of his teaching ; nevertheless, 
tJiese have not been made the fundamental basis of teach- 
ing and effort in any of the great religions of the world, 
not even in historic Christianity. 

The Christ interpretation of God, man, and the world, 






86 THE OPEN DOOR. 



as presented in the four gospel narratives, does not, we 
repeat, dominate the conceptions which rest in the minds 
of the devotees of any form of religion to-day, save in a 
scattered few of his true followers, who are not confined 
to any church called " Christian," but are found within 
the folds and outside the folds of perhaps all the systems. 
" Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of per- 
sons : but in every nation he that f eareth him, and work- 
eth righteousness, is acceptable to him." 

The Christ Application Revolutionary.— The Christ 
conception of the divine Fatherhood and brotherhood 
is radical and revolutionary in its practical application 
to the prevailing religious systems of the world, includ- 
ing historic Christianity. It strikes at the root of all 
priestly and churchly authority over the reason, con- 
science and intuitions of men, as it does to every form of 
despotic rule, tyranny, violence and oppression. 

The awakened sense of the Divine Fatherhood in the 
soul of man destroys forever all thought of the despotic 
and arbitrary from the conception of the Divine Charac- 
ter and Government. The thought of the infinite jus- 
tice of God as the All-Father, strikes no terror to the 
heart of man as His child. Knowing that divine justice 
is the combined expression of the infinite love and wis- 
dom, its contemplation awakens only gratitude, love, 
reverence, and an indestructible sense of security. 

The enthronement of the kingdom of God in the life 
of man on earth — the realization of the Christ ideal — 
will be the universal reign of love, sympathy and 
brotherhood. The actualization of this will be the es- 
tablishment of the real " Church of the Spirit," the only 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 87 

church that can be truthfully called Christian. The im- 
partial ministry of Christ to men was and is the expres- 
sion of His impartial love and sympathy for all his 
brethren. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of 
the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto 
me." 

As the immediate child of God and brother of Christ, 
each man has an equal claim and dependence with every 
other upon the direct love and providence of the Father, 
who " is no respecter of persons." 

The Father, in His love and providence, is as near to 
the heart and life of the humblest of His children as to 
the most exalted. The most undeveloped or degenerate 
soul on earth, or in the darkest depths of the life be- 
yond, has the same access to the Father in prayer and 
communion through penitence, love, and faith, that is 
accorded to the loftiest seraph of celestial spheres. 
Nevertheless, as children of a common Father, and 
brethren of one family, they should all be helpers one of 
another. As each soul, therefore, comes into the reali- 
zation of unity of Spirit and purpose with God, it comes 
into corresponding realization of unity of interest and 
privilege with men. Thus and thus only is realized the 
universal Brotherhood of man in the eternal and all-em- 
bracing Fatherhood of God. 

The solidarity or organic unity of the race-life is the 
only basis of universal brotherhood, and this implies a 
common origin and a kindred destiny. There can be no 
universal brotherhood without a corresponding Father- 
hood — and Motherhood — and this is necessarily involved 
in the divine birthright of Humanity as the immediate 



88 THE OPEN DOOR. 

offspring and care of the One all-sustaining Life, Love, 
and overruling Providence. There is and can be no 
other permanent and sufficient basis of a universal 
Brotherhood. 

Its Practical Results when Applied. — The incarnation 
of the Spirit of Brotherhood in the universal Humanity 
will be the eternal abolition of monopoly, caste and class 
privilege. Instead of seeking or demanding unwilling 
or enforced service at the hands of others, each will find 
his chief delight in ministering to others, because it will 
be the - relation and service of love. Service will be 
gratefully accepted because, and only as it is the spon- 
taneous offering of love. This is the true law and spirit 
of brotherhood, and only through the cultivation of this 
spirit and fidelity to its law can man enter into the real- 
ization of his divine heritage and possibilities as a child 
of God. 

Since then the spiritual nature and divine sonship of 
man is the root out of which springs the possibility of 
the perfection of his personal and social life, the recog- 
nition and realization of this fundamental and stupen- 
dous truth is the first real step toward this perfection, 
without which no true progress in spiritual life is possi- 
ble. This can be taken only through the moral adjust- 
ment of the personal life to our relations with God as 
child to parent, and to our relations with men as breth- 
ren. 

It is only as a moral and spiritual being that man is 
specifically the child of God, having identity of nature and 
oneness of life with Him. It is, therefore, only through 
fidelity to the moral law in the personal and social life 



THE CHEIST DOCTKINE EPITOMIZED. 89 

that he can enter into the full realization of his spiritual 
nature, divine sonship and brotherhood, and so of his 
identity of nature and oneness of life with the Father. 

As the true relation of parent with child and brother 
with sister is the relation of kinship and love, based upon 
identity of nature and oneness of life, it can be fully re- 
alized only through mutual love, confidence and fidelity. 
Hence it is only through fidelity to the moral law of pu- 
rity and truth in the relations of the personal and social 
life under the inspiration of love, that men can walk and 
dwell in unity of spirit and purpose with the Father and 
the brethren. 

Unity of spirit and purpose with God in the personal 
life, will secure unity with Him in our relations with 
men and with Nature. The realization of this unity with 
the Father in Spirit and truth is possible, we repeat, 
only through mutual love, confidence, and fidelity be- 
tween God and man as Parent and child. Since, how- 
ever, God is absolute and perfect Being, infinite, eternal 
and changeless — changeless because perfect — in His love 
and providence, it is left for man as His child to respond 
to and reciprocate that love and changeless fidelity. 
" We love Him because he first loved." 

Man as a child of God is a rational and moral being, 
endowed with the freedom of choice and action. He is 
capable, therefore, of seeking this unity with the Father, 
or, reckless of the divine law and order, seeking only the 
indulgence of his own self-will. He is responsible, then, 
for his course of action and the results of his choice to 
the full extent of his knowledge, or opportunity of know- 
ing the better way. 



90 THE OPEN DOOR. 

With the recognition of his spiritual nature and divine 
sonship, man's first duty is to adjust himself to the moral 
law and order in this divine relationship, through the 
supreme loyalty of love and faith ; that trust, confidence, 
and fidelity which love alone inspires and secures. " God 
is love ; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, 
and God in him." " Beloved, let us love one another ; 
for love is of God ; and everyone that loveth is born of 
God, and knoweth God." " No man hath seen God at 
any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, 
and his love is perfected in us." " He that loveth not, 
knoweth not God ; for God is love." 

Love alone brings conscious unity with God or man, 
and secures fidelity to both. " Love is the fulfilling of 
the law," and fulfilment of the law brings perfection of 
being. Since, then, God is the eternal, changeless, and 
perfect One, " our Father in heaven," the realization of 
human perfection can be reached only through perfect 
adjustment of the human to the divine, or man to God as 
child to parent ; and love toward God as Father is the 
only key to that adjustment. 

The Christ Secret of At-one-ment. — The At-one-ment 
of man with God, and the enthronement or incarnation 
of divinity in humanity through that at-one-ment — " the 
"Word made flesh " — is the central idea and sublime aim 
of the Theosophy of the Christ. 

Jesus was the first to grasp the full secret of this at- 
one-ment and incarnation, as well as the basis of its pos- 
sibility and actualization, and to demonstrate the su- 
preme reality of both in his own experience. 

The law of this divine attainment was, it is true, seen 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 91 

and announced in ancient prophecy ; but the secret of 
personal adjustment to that law was first fully opened to 
the w T orld by the Christ in his revelation of the intimate 
and vital relation of man to God as the child of His love 
and providence, and its demonstration in his own experi- 
ence. " The law was given by Moses, but grace and 
truth came by Jesus Christ." " Hear, O Israel : The 
Lord our God is one. And thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all 
thy mind and with all thy strength. This is the first and 
great commandment. The second is like unto it : Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two com- 
mandments/' said Jesus, " hang all the law and the 
prophets." 

It is certain that man cannot love God supremely and 
every man as himself, until he comes to the personal re- 
alization of his intimate relation to the Father as the 
child of His love, and of his relation to every man as a 
brother in that love. Hence the recognition of this two- 
fold relationship, as the supreme ideal of personal ad- 
justment and realization, is a necessity to the awaken- 
ing and inspiration of that love which alone will secure 
this adjustment and realization. 

It is the clear recognition and supreme emphasis of 
this great central and fundamental truth which gives the 
teaching of Jesus pre-eminence over all other teaching 
the world has had. 

Whai it will Do for Man, — This love for and faith in 
God and man brings the spirit of unity with both, un- 
seals the fountain of inspiration, lifts man to the har- 
mony of being, and secures the full illumination and 



92 THE OPEN DOOK. 

power of the perfect life. " Ye shall receive power 
when the Holy Spirit [that which is wholly spiritual] 
has come upon you ; and ye shall be my witnesses," etc. 
Those only, therefore, who live this transcendent life of 
spiritual supremacy, illumination and power can be 
called the true witnesses for -Christ in the world. 

And again, " When the Comforter is come, which is the 
Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name," 
" even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Fa- 
ther," "he shall teach you all things, and bring all 
things, to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said 
unto you." " He will guide you into all truth : and will 
show you things to come." 

To this sublime assurance of the Master an illumi- 
nated Apostle adds : " But the manifestation of the Spirit 
is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is 
given by the Spirit the word of wisdom ; to another, the 
word of knowledge by the same Spirit ; to another, faith 
by the same Spirit ; to another, the gifts of healing by 
the same Spirit ; to another, the working of miracles ; to 
another prophecy ; to another, discerning of spirits ; to 
another, divers kinds of tongues, to another, the inter- 
pretation of tongues ; but all these worketh that one 
and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally 
as he will." 

As we have the perfect illustration, in the Master, of 
this transcendent life of spiritual supremacy in the flesh, 
thus opened to all men as the children of God, we have 
also in that example the perfect standard by which to 
judge of our own attainment. 

The Oriental Contrast. — Under the best interpretation 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 93 

of the most elevated form of Oriental Theosophy, these 
spiritual attainments are believed to be possible only as 
the result of an almost endless round of physical incar- 
nations. This doctrine of reincarnation is the logical 
and legitimate result of the conception of God, and of 
the corresponding inherent possibilities of man as his 
child, upon which the doctrine is based. The perfect 
spiritual vision, which complete illumination only se- 
cures, had not been opened to the great Magi, Seers and 
Sages of the Orient. To such teachers the Christ, in his 
kindly sympathy, practically says : " Ye do err, not 
knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God." 

No founder of any of the great religions, nor teacher 
previous to Jesus, had made the universal Fatherhood, 
perfect providence, and co-operative sympathy of God 
and His ministry of grace to men, the basis of their 
possible immediate divine realization through their own 
recognition and co-operation therewith. 

The Hebrew Limitation. — To the Hebrew mind, God 
was recognized only as the God of Israel, to be loved 
and obeyed as such. The Israelites were his elect and 
chosen people. Other nations were regarded in a gen- 
eral way as " Gentile dogs," and by many despised and 
hated as enemies. 

It is true that many inspired prophets and the more 
spiritual-minded Rabbis recognized Jehovah as the God 
of the universe and the Creator of the world, as pro- 
claimed in Genesis ; yet to the narrower conception of the 
masses he was practically but a tutelary being, a god 
among, though greater than, other gods, nevertheless a 
partial or limited and local divinity. 






94 THE OPEN DOOR. 

No Hebrew prophet prior to Jesus had succeeded in 
awaking in the popular mind the conception of the 
universal Fatherhood, love and providence of God, and 
the immediate divine possibilities of man based upon 
his divine sonship and heredity. 

This conception, we repeat, has not been made the 
basis of faith and effort in any of the great religious 
systems of the world, including ecclesiastical Christi- 
anity. It was, however, the basis of the Christ and 
Apostolic teaching and life, and the source and secret of 
their power. Jesus was the first great teacher of the 
world who recognized and proclaimed, with the positive 
assurance of personal consciousness, God as both im- 
manent and transcendent Being, the universal and imme- 
diate life, as well as the overruling wisdom, power and 
providence, and so of necessity the immediate Father of 
men. 

Jesus and Buddha. — The greatest Seer and Sage of the 
oriental world was, unquestionably, Gautama Buddha, 
" the Light of Asia." The contrast between this concep- 
tion of Jesus, whom we call the Christ, or God illumi- 
nated, and that upon which the teaching of Gautama, 
called the Buddha, or enlightened, was based, is worth a 
brief consideration. Gautama was sufficiently enlight- 
ened to perceive the universality and unity of life and 
law. On this recognition he based his doctrine of 
Brotherhood and mercy. His spiritual insight, how- 
ever, was not sufficiently opened to reach the vision of 
" Our Father in heaven," which made glad and trium- 
phant the soul of Jesus. In place of this he recognized 
only unbending Law and iron Necessity. Hence, Karma, 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 95 

Beincamation, and ultimate Nirvana were to his mind 
the only pathway to emancipation and freedom. 

Says the author of " God in His World : " " Gautama 
Buddha, who held a place in Eastern faith which no 
other man, if we except Confucius, ever occupied, ac- 
cepted the entire Hindu pantheon and the doctrine of 
the transmigration of souls ; but contemplating- the hard 
condition of human life, and considering that death itself 
was no release ; reasoning also that if God were good He 
could not be all-powerful, or, if all-powerful He could not 
be good — so that man could not look unto Him for help — 
he determined to find a way for humanity out of its dis- 
tresses. The only pathway was out of all life — an escape 
from all divine manifestation and from human operation 
and consciousness. Hence the gospel of Nirvana. The 
ultimate and only possible blessedness must be the ex- 
tinction of existence. . . . His gospel of religious 
nihilism was as methodical as it was radical. He dili- 
gently turned " the wheel of the law " that he might find 
the way to reverse all the processes of Nature and destroy 
desire at its very source. He preached the thorough con- 
tempt of life and, finally, the contempt of the very pro- 
cesses — the renunciation and mortification — for its ex- 
tinction." 

Influence of the Deiflc Conception. — Enough has been 
said to show that a man's conception of the nature and 
character of God and His government determines neces- 
sarily his conception of his own nature and possibilities. 
The ideal, method and promise of Jesus, in contrast with 
those of Buddha, are a striking illustration of this. 
Hence, the transcendent importance of the Christ doc- 



96 THE OPEN DOOR. 

trine, if true, viz.: That man may come to an experimen- 
tal knowledge of God as Father and Friend, and to the 
immediate realization of the spirituality and divine pos- 
sibilities of his own being, through co-operation with 
the Father to this end. 

The influence which a man's conception of deity has 
upon his own faith, effort, and destiny illustrates the im- 
portance of each soul testing for itself the claim and 
promise of the Christ, the most emancipating and ex- 
alting the world has had. 

The Pantheistic Conception. — A brief consideration 
of the pantheistic conception of God and its influence 
upon the life of man will further illustrate the impor- 
tance of this truth, and at the same time disclose the 
secret of that sense of fatality which permeates the 
thought of the Oriental world, and leads to the accept- 
ance of the doctrine of "Karma " and Reincarnation. 
The spreading of this Eastern doctrine in our "Western 
world has a like basis in the prevalent Pantheistic sense 
of Nature and the recognition of an iron necessity in the 
supremacy of immutable law. 

If, then, we start out with the conception that God is 
the all of things, and that the all of things constitutes 
God, beyond which He has no Being, then Spirit be- 
comes a very different thing to our thought from the 
Christ conception of " Our Father in heaven." 

It is no longer something transcending the phenom- 
enal universe, but something less, because only a part 
thereof, that which we call matter being the other part. 
"We have, then, to think of spirit, at the best, as a univer- 
sal principle of unconscious life, permeating the grosser 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 97 

substance we call matter, spirit being the positive and 
active element or factor, and matter the negative and 
passive. Spirit, being an unconscious principle of spon- 
taneous energy or active power, is necessarily without 
will, creative purpose, divine sympathy, or intelligent 
providence. 

Through the spontaneous action, reaction, and inter- 
action of spirit and matter, worlds are formed, cycles of 
career or development established, and life evolved, ulti- 
mating at length in the individualization of the human 
soul and body. Those principles or factors whose union 
and combination constitute the soul are derived and 
evolved from the inner or spiritual side of Nature, and 
those of the body from the outer or physical side, making 
man a Microcosm or epitome of the great whole, or Ma- 
crocosm. 

The soul being the result of the action and reaction 
between spirit and matter, its further evolution as a 
soul can be carried forward only through its own action 
upon and reaction against matter in a physical organism. 
Hence the necessity, when once individualized, of repeat- 
ed incarnations in physical bodies, and the supreme law 
of Karma, or consequence, which determines the level or 
grade, condition and character of each succeeding incar- 
nation, a legitimate deduction and logical necessity 
from the premises. 

Under this view, the actual development of the soul is 
the result of its activities and experiences in direct con- 
tact with matter ; hence it must exhaust the possibilities 
of matter through repeated incarnations, on this and 
other planets of the solar system to which it belongs, 



98 THE OPEN DOOR. 

before it can become emancipated from its dependence 
upon and bondage to matter, and pass as pure spiritual 
being into Nirvana. Hence, the almost universal adop- 
tion and practice of asceticism by the Eastern religions, 
to lessen the number of reincarnations and hasten the 
process of spiritual emancipation. 

Nature of Nirvana. — There are different conceptions 
and interpretations of the state called "Nirvana." 
There are those who hold that the soul retains in Nir- 
vana a conscious state of personal immortality and bless- 
edness, equivalent to the Christian's ideal of heaven ; 
while others look and hope for final absorption into 
universal spirit, and the complete extinction of personal 
consciousness. 

Three Determining Conceptions. — There can be but 
three general conceptions of the origin of things, which 
constitute the basis of the various philosophies of life 
and destiny, embraced by the thinking portions of the 
world. These are : first, Materialism, in which matter is 
the all ; second, Pantheism, in which matter and spirit 
play, practically, an equal part, the phenomenal uni- 
verse of matter (substance) and spirit (force) constituting 
the all, behind and above which there is no Being, con- 
scious or otherwise; and third, Theism, which recog- 
nizes a Creator, Sustainer, and moral Governor, dwelling 
within, behind, and above the organized worlds and the 
cosmic void from which they were brought forth, in 
the unconditioned splendor of His original, eternal 
and absolute Being. There are modifications of these 
three general conceptions which constitute distinct 
systems of thought and interpretation, but practically, 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 99 

they are all embraced under these three general divi- 
sions. 

The Christ conception which recognizes God as both 
immanent and transcendent Being, infinite in wisdom, 
goodness and providence, and man as the immediate 
offspring of God, with an inherent capacity of rising into 
immediate conscious communion and fellowship with 
the Father, is the highest form of Theism. It is also 
the noblest, most comprehensive and inspiring concep- 
tion which has yet been presented to the world. The 
same is true of the philosophy it involves. At the same 
time, the means of its verification are the simplest, and 
are within reach of the humblest soul that has risen to 
the level of moral perception and rational discrimina- 
tion and discretion. The Christ, in his complete illu- 
mination, reaching the open vision and proclaiming the 
true nature and character of God and His government 
as the Father of human spirits, and the divine possi- 
bilities of man as the child of God, and demonstrating 
this two-fold truth in his own experience before the 
world, stepped forth infinitely in advance of all other 
teachers. He brought to full realization in his earthly 
embodiment the deepest yearnings of the human soul 
for spiritual freedom and supremacy, and thus fulfilled 
the loftiest prophetic aspirations and inspired efforts of 
the Seers and Sages who preceded him. For the first 
time on earth he lifted up the perfect ideal, and demon- 
strated in his own example the perfect law and living 
way of its attainment for his race, " the way, the truth, 
and the life" for his brethren, their supreme Leader, 
Exemplar and Helper. 



100 THE OPEN DOOR. 

The Interpreting Name,— Said the inspired Peter at 
Pentecost, " There is none other name under heaven 
given among- men whereby we must be saved." The 
Christ ideal of salvation was not, and is not the ideal 
salvation of the churches called Christian, nor of the 
various religions of the world. The salvation he offered 
was the true and perfect life of the sons and daughters 
of God on earth, saved to their divine inheritance and 
heredity. " Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your hea- 
venly Father is perfect." It was to be a life of spiritual 
freedom and supremacy in and over the flesh and en- 
vironment here and now, a life above the power of temp- 
tation and sin, as above the power of contagion and dis- 
ease. " He shall save his people from their sins ; " " And 
if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them ; 
they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." 

When Peter uttered those inspired words at Pente- 
cost, designating the only name under heaven among 
men, myriads of risen souls had doubtless entered into 
the fulness of the perfect life of divine realization and 
fellowship in the spheres of light, the light of the 
higher life dispelling the mists and imperfect vision of 
this. These, in turn, may have helped through spiritual 
ministry the Christ himself to his attainment — as we read, 
"Angels ministered unto him and strengthened him" 
— yet, " under heaven " " among men " the Christ stood as 
the only perfect representative or embodiment and real- 
ization of " the way, the truth, and the life " for men. 

Traditional Theology not Christian Theosophy.— The 
foregoing definition and epitome of the Theosophy of 
the Christ will, we trust, prevent the confounding of that 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 101 

Theosophy with the traditional theology and teaching 
of the historic Church which bears his name. It is true 
that some within its folds have, in all the centuries of 
its history, caught more or less clearly the Master's se- 
cret of the higher life, and have sought to that extent to 
actualize it in the flesh. Nevertheless, the Church as a 
body has sadly departed both in letter and spirit from 
the living gospel of the Son of God and Brother of men, 
and substituted therefor the speculative doctrines of 
"the fathers." It has thus set up external and arbitrary 
standards of authority and interpretation, in which it 
became entangled in its own perversions of the letter 
which killeth, and lost the Spirit which alone giveth life, 
revealeth truth, and maketh free. It has thus made the 
Word of God in Christ — the living Word incarnate — of 
none effect through its traditions. 

A Paganized Christianity. — From the days of Con- 
stantine, the so-called Christian Church has been but 
little more than a paganized corruption of the apostolic 
brotherhood and teaching. In place of the universal 
Fatherhood and perfect providence of God, and the sav- 
ing power of His love to lift men to the full fruition of 
their divine possibilities as His children — which through 
the Christ was to be made the good tidings of great joy 
to all people — it has set up what ? A monstrous carica- 
ture. On the basis of the huge misconception and theo- 
logic fiction of an arbitrary, despotic and angry Deity, 
and His hell of endless torture in the world to come, to 
which all men are by nature doomed, and from which 
they are to be saved only through some propitiation and 
purchased favor, it has set up a scheme of propitiation 



102 THE OPEN DOOK. 

and purchase as monstrous, barbaric, and abhorrent to a 
spiritually enlightened soul as is the heathenish con- 
ception on which it is based. 

The pagan superstition of appeasing the anger of the 
gods and securing their favor by sacrificial offerings has 
thus, strangely enough, been made the principle of in- 
terpreting the mediatorial work of the Christ, who above 
all things was raised up to make known the eternal 
Fatherhood, perfect providence, and changeless love of 
God, and the glorious possibilities and indestructible 
privileges of man as the child of God. 

The introduction of this paganism, as a principle of 
interpretation, into Christianity, subverted the very 
foundation of the Christ teaching, and corrupted the en- 
tire stream of Christian thought and worship through 
the centuries. 

Under this interpretation the cruel and wicked mar- 
tyrdom of Jesus — an official murder by a maddened peo- 
ple — became an atoning sacrifice for human sin, an ac- 
ceptable offering to God as a substitute for punishment 
due the guilty, the merits of his righteous life and sacri- 
ficial death being imputed to the sinner on his accept- 
ance by faith of the Crucified One as his substitute, 
making God a party to the scheme. 

On the basis of such a paganized corruption, scholas- 
tic subtlety succeeded in formulating and fastening upon 
the Christian system this barbaric doctrine of vicarious 
atonement and substituted righteousness as the very es- 
sence of the Gospel, the central and foundation truth of 
the Christ message and work. 

The Iteal and the Fictitious Christ.— The revealer of 



THE CHEIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 103 

" Our Father in heaven " — the real Christ of God, the be- 
loved Son, supreme Brother, and spiritual Helper of men, 
has been utterly lost sight of in this traditional and fic- 
titious Christ, thus foisted upon the world as the di- 
vinely accepted scapegoat for human sin, the victim of 
an unjust, barbaric, and abhorrent scheme of human and 
divine complicity. ♦ 

Only the blinding power of a fictitious, traditional au- 
thority, under the bias of hereditary impression and 
prejudice, could hide from the enlightened mentality 
and advanced thought of to-day the heathenism of this 
doctrine, which, stripped of its scholastic setting and 
seen in its bald literalness, distorts every principle 
of justice and blasphemes the merciful and righteous 
character of " Our Father in heaven." It also utterly 
belies the Christ doctrine of divine forgiveness, healing, 
and restoration, through repentance and faith without 
expiation or mediation, as disclosed and specifically em- 
phasized in the parable of the Prodigal Son, as it does 
also his doctrine of salvation in personal righteousness 
only, which is the burden of his Sermon on the Mount 
and of all his teaching in example, precept and parable. 

Mistaken Efforts of the Church. — Under this terribly 
mistaken attitude and impression, the frantic and gener- 
ally well meant efforts of the Church called Christian — 
Roman, Greek and Protestant alike — have been directed 
to the saving of souls from " the wrath to come," the 
hell and prison-house of another world, the doors of 
which are supposed to be opened to and eternally closed 
upon the sinner at death. The mere mention of this 
crass fiction of theology to the modern mind would be 



104 THE OPEN DOOK. 

grotesquely ludicrous in its absurdity, were it not for 
the ghastly realism in which for centuries it has been 
presented as a vital truth of religion, under the sup- 
posed sanction of divine authority and revelation. 

Until the religious world is emancipated from this 
horrible nightmare of mediaeval theology, until the 
darkening shadows and mantling gloom which it has 
thrown around the thought of God, death, and the 
after life are dispersed by the pure white light of truth, 
there can be no true conception or realization of the 
higher spiritual life and experience. 

In the true and normal life which the reign of Chris- 
tian Theosophy will secure, God, transition — which men 
call death — and immortality will be among the most de- 
lightful and ennobling themes of human contemplation. 
The specific function of the Theosophy of the Christ is 
to induct man into the boundless love and wisdom of 
the Father, by opening his interior life to divine influx 
and communion. It will thus emancipate him from the 
hells of fear, ignorance, superstition and perverted ani- 
mality, by lifting him at once into the light and freedom 
of spiritual supremacy and divine fellowship. 

Sectarianism, not Brotherhood. — Ecclesiastical su- 
premacy and sectarian clannishness are not the out- 
growth of the spirit of divine sonship and brotherhood, 
under the immediate inspiration and guidance of an all- 
wise and merciful Father in heaven. They are the de- 
velopment and manifestation of'another and very differ- 
ent principle. They furnish no evidence of spiritual 
attainment or divine realization, but rather the spirit of 
human aggrandizement and the selfish appropriation 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 105 

and monopoly of power. They do not represent the 
kingdom of God and the doing of His will on earth as it 
is done in heaven, where all is love, sympathy and 
brotherhood. Yet this was the only ideal set up by the 
Christ for which men were to labor and pray. " Thy 
kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
heaven." 

In proclaiming the spiritual nature and divine possi- 
bilities of men as children of God, he bade them seek 
the immediate fruition of these possibilities, by enter- 
ing into unity of spirit and will with the Father, through 
which alone the divine Anointing or Illumination is se- 
cured. " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his 
righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto 
you." " The kingdom of God and his righteousness," 
is, so far as man is concerned, a life at one with the will 
and purpose of God in us. This is the sure and only 
pathway to the freedom and mastery which belong to 
the true and loyal children of God. Under the unfailing 
loyalty of the Father to His children, man cannot walk 
and dwell in unity with him in His supremacy and wis- 
dom, without being lifted and held to a life of spiritual 
supremacy and illumination. 

The Great Mistake. — In departing from this standard 
of personal righteousness under divine guidance and 
illumination, set up by the Christ as the true and only 
salvation of inspired promise, and substituting there- 
for an official and fictitious salvation through imputed 
righteousness by vicarious substitution, under the ar- 
bitrary assumption of ecclesiastic authority, and creedal 
standards of interpreting the letter of Scripture, the 



106 THE OPEN DOOR. 

Church departed from the living way and lost its spir- 
itual life, inspiration and power. In substituting the 
speculative opinions of the fathers for the living words 
of the Master, it fell under the just condemnation of the 
Master himself : " Howbeit in vain do they worship me, 
teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." 

The saddest feature of our modern life is the pitiable 
sight of the Church to-day, in the midst of the general 
enlightenment, and the possession of its own vast re- 
sources of learning and cumulative intelligence, bowing 
in such servile attitude to the traditions of a darker age, 
and clinging with insane tenacity to the standards of the 
fathers in direct antagonism to the living Gospel of the 
Son of God. It cannot escape even to-day the Master's 
stinging rebuke, " Full well ye reject the commandment 
of God, that ye may keep your own tradition." 

In spite, however, of the misconception, misinterpreta- 
tion and paganized corruption of the Gospel of the 
Christ by the Church, she has done an inestimable ser- 
vice to the world by preserving to our age the essential 
letter of the original story of the Master's transcendent 
life and words ; for this let due credit be given. 

When fully emancipated from the thraldom of eccle- 
siastical despotism and the bias of traditional corruptions 
and superstitions, the religious world will re-interpret 
the life and words of the Master by the key which he 
himself has left us, as indeed it is already beginning to 
do. Then will be fulfilled the Master's own prophecy in 
the parable of the wheat and the tares, in which he 
clearly foresaw and depicted this very historic dealing 
with his gospel. The tares of paganized corruptions, 



THE CHEIST DOCTKUSTE EPITOMIZED. 107 

false standards of authority, and the spirit of sectarian- 
ism or antichrist will be gathered up, bound in bundles 
and burned in the cleansing fire of a just and inspired 
criticism, and the pure wheat of the gospel used in its 
power for the saving of the nations. 

The Great Delusion. — If the controlling power of the 
universe is a Spiritual Being, infinite in wisdom and 
goodness, and the immediate Father of human spirits, as 
taught by the Christ, then the whole scheme of Chris- 
tian theology, based upon the supposed fall and deprav- 
ity of man and salvation through vicarious atonement 
and substituted righteousness, is a gigantic delusion. 
The total corruption of the immediate offspring of infi- 
nite wisdom and goodness, and their final separation from 
the parent life and love, is an utter impossibility. 

As a responsible and progressive being, learning from 
experience, man, as an individual or as a race, is liable of 
necessity, in the childhood stage of his career, to mis- 
takes, errors, and temporary states and periods of per- 
verted activity. But as an organic being and the child 
of infinite perfection he is the engermed embodiment of 
divine attributes and infinite possibilities — a God in em- 
bryo. Hence, in a universe of infinite harmony and 
divinely adjusted conditions and providence, the inborn 
divinity will sooner or later come to full-rounded organic 
embodiment or incarnation, as represented and demon- 
strated in the Beloved Son, Supreme Brother, and Model 
man. 

No Fallen Race. — There is and can be no fallen race, 
as such, and therefore no original or hereditary sin. 
The only fall possible to rational and moral beings is a 



108 THE OPEN DOOR. 

fall from innocence through a violation of the moral 
law of truth and purity, and this is wholly an individual 
matter between each soul and God. Under the universal 
and impartial law of truth and right, each soul must 
stand or fall by its own motive and act. " What mean 
ye, that ye use this proverb, . . . saying, The fathers 
have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set 
on edge % . . . Behold, all souls are mine ; as is the 
soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine : 
the soul that sinneth, it shall die." No child nor man is 
a sinner before God until, of his own free will, he has 
committed sin, by a violation of the law of right and 
truth. Every child, therefore, is born innocent — innocent 
as the typical Adam before his fall, who but symbolized 
the innocence of all childhood. 

The Symbolism of Eden. — The parable of the garden 
" in Eden," which theologians have blindly and absurdly 
accepted as literal history, is a symbolic narrative and 
meant only as such, as is evident from the figure of the 
speaking serpent. It symbolizes the garden of the hu- 
man soul, " Eden " representing the state of innocence in 
which every soul is brought into personal existence. 
Expulsion from Eden symbolizes the fall from innocence 
through violation of the law of purity and truth, in disobe- 
dience to the voice of God in the soul. The tempting ser- 
pent symbolizes animal desire calling for unrestrained in- 
dulgence, or the seeking of sensual gratification as an end. 

The Christ Door of Restoration. — Kecovery and res- 
toration from the fall, or state of guilt and sin, as taught 
by the Christ, is effected through repentance and faith, 
which open the soul at once, without expiation or 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 109 

mediation to the healing and restoring power of the 
divine love and forgiveness, which are absolute and 
immediate. This is a law and provision of the Divine 
Economy, which, without this provision, would not be 
divine and perfect. The Lord Christ so fully realized 
this that he was moved to illustrate and emphasize it by 
a special parable in the story of " the prodigal son." 
The restoring power of the spiritual life in the divine 
forgiveness is here represented as immediate, lifting the 
soul from the lowest possible depths of wandering, de- 
gradation and depravity to its original position of ad- 
vantage and privilege before God and among men. 
The riotous and dissipated prodigal " had spent all" but 
on repentance was restored at once, without expiation or 
mediation, to his original place and full fellowship in 
the father's household. 

This, to be sure, is not human justice, which would, 
like the elder son of the parable, demand expiation, or 
the full working out of one's " Karma ; " but it is the 
justice of the divine and changeless love of the Father. 
" It was meet that we should make merry and be glad : 
for this my son " and " thy brother was dead and is alive 
again, and was lost, and is found." 

Physical Conditions Overruled by Spiritual.— On the 
physical plane, and to the sensuous understanding, the 
recognition of the law of necessity, and the power of 
Karma is perfectly legitimate and consistent. But to 
moral and spiritual beings, as children of God, on the 
plane and within the sphere of the divine relationship, 
the power of divine love and forgiveness — the law of the 
spiritual life— breaks the wheel of necessity, overrules 



110 THE OPEN DOOR. 

the law of Karma, and lifts the soul into the boundless 
freedom and supremacy of the Spirit. Freedom and su- 
premacy in and over all the relations of materiality and 
its conditions is the rightful heritage of man as an em- 
bodied spirit and son of God. 

All life, intelligence, goodness and power, are expres- 
sions or manifestations of Spirit, qualities only of spirit- 
ual being. In God as universal Spirit, and Supreme 
Being, these are absolute and infinite. Man as the im- 
mediate child of God under organic conditions is the 
engermed embodiment of the Divine nature and attri- 
butes. He must therefore of necessity as a child of 
God possess the inherent capacity of rising to the full 
organic consciousness, or consciousness as an organic 
being, of his spiritual nature and immediate relation- 
ship to God. Through this realization as an embodied 
spirit he enters into his spiritual supremacy, and attains 
the personal mastery of all the physical relations and 
conditions of his environment. This attainment can be 
possible, however, to a rational and moral being, only 
through conformity with the moral order of the Divine 
Economy, or unity with the Divine will and purpose, 
which is secured only through obedience to the law of 
the spirit in the personal life. Departure from this law 
brings the soul into bondage and degradation ; and re- 
turn to it through repentance and faith restores the soul 
again to soundness and freedom. Continued obedience 
to this law secures healthful growth and freedom, or in- 
tegral development in the life, power and character of 
the Father. " Son thou art ever with me, and all that is 
mine is thine." 



THE CHEIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. Ill 

Reincarnation a Mistaken Speculation.— Under this 
Christ doctrine of God in the infinite supremacy of His 
Being and providence, and of man as His immediate off- 
spring for whom all things were made, and are held sub- 
ordinate, but one physical embodiment is necessary to 
individualize and establish the permanent identity of the 
soul, and start it upon an endless career of unfolding life 
and progress through ever opening and interiorly ex- 
panding and ascending spheres of conscious being. 

This doctrine, let us remember and emphasize, holds 
God not only as immanent in Nature and man, the es- 
sential life of both, but that, in the spirituality, divine 
consciousness, and original perfection of His Being and 
providence, He transcends the universe, which exists only 
in His universal life, as the human soul transcends the 
body, which exists only in its concrete life. 

Man, as the ultimate product of creation, is of necessity 
the direct offspring of God, the final embodiment of His 
immanent life, and, therefore, in his essential nature and 
constitution a spiritual being from the first, holding po- 
tentially in his life the attributes of the Father's trans- 
cendent Being. He is then, we repeat, a God in embryo, 
and in his essential constitution transcends the world in 
which he was born, and is capable of rising through and 
over all the conditions of his environment into the per- 
fection and supremacy of being which characterize the 
Father. 

The perfect moral adjustment of man to his organic re- 
lations with the Father, and so with the brethren and his 
environment, through which the illumination of his soul 
and the harmony and integral development of His Be- 



112 



THE OPEN DOOR. 



ing are secured, is possible to everyone who has reached 
the stage of a rational and moral discretion, whether on 
earth or in the land of souls. All this is certainly in- 
volved in the conception of God and of man,, presented 
by the Christ. " The time is fulfilled and the kingdom 
of God is at hand ; repent ye and believe the gospel." 

If this stupendous claim be true, man cannot fairly ac- 
cept it even as a provisional ideal and basis of effort and 
assume his true attitude toward God, man, and his envi- 
ronment on this basis, without finding the demonstration 
of its truth in personal experience. This result was 
promised by the Master to all who faithfully followed his 
instruction and example. " I am the light of the world : 
[no one excluded] he that followeth me shall not walk in 
darkness, but shall have the light of life." 

Absolute Transcendency of Spirit. — Life, intelligence, 
affection and moral quality are manifestations of spirit, 
not qualities of matter. Pure Spirit, the essence of all 
conscious being — the Deific Essence — must from its very 
nature always and forever transcend and control the sub- 
stance and formative processes of organism and form. 

Gradations of Matter. — The material substance in and 
through which Spirit finds embodiment and its attributes 
obtain organic expression, is not confined . to that gross 
state which men call matter, but exists in infinite grada- 
tions of refinement, ranging from the crudest mineral 
deposit up to a state of invisible and impalpable ether. 
Indeed, the ethereal state was undoubtedly the original 
condition of the primordial ocean of cosmic substance 
from which the elements that compose the various mate- 
rial substances of the planets were precipitated. This 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 113 

precipitation took place through successive steps of mar 
terialization under the impulse of what we conceive to 
be an omnific energy, which in its last analysis is the 
energy of pure Spirit, the immediate power of God. The 
successive steps of the descent are from the ethereal con- 
dition to the gaseous, from the gaseous to fluid, and from 
fluid to solid. Reversing the order, we have earth, 
water, air, ether, Spirit, the first four being elemental in 
constitution, and subject to change and transformation ; 
the last is the eternal, changeless and Imparticled Es- 
sence, the spring of all motion, life, sensation and intel- 
gence. In rising from lower to higher on these succes- 
sive steps of gradation in the world substance, we find 
ourselves passing by discrete degrees from the coarser 
to the finer, from the external to the internal, from mat- 
ter to Spirit. 

What is remarkable, as we thus rise through these 
discrete degrees of refinement, we find the finer more 
and more penetrating and embracing the cruder and 
coarser, until all, in the final step, are found absolutely 
interpenetrated by and held in the all-embracing grasp 
of omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient Spirit., 
Water thus, in a degree, penetrates and surrounds earth; 
air, more rarefied, correspondingly penetrates and sur- 
rounds both ; more subtile and elastic than air, the in- 
visible ether penetrates the densest substances, em- 
braces the atoms, fills the interstellar spaces, and con- 
nects by influence, as a medium of vibratory impulses, 
the atoms of one planet with another. The attenu- 
ation of matter can reach no farther. When we pass 

beyond the plane of the impalpable ether we touch the 
8 






114 THE OPEN DOOR. 

sphere of the divine inmost, the shoreless ocean and in- 
finite depths and heights of Spirit, the inscrutable Being 
of God, the Almighty, All-wise, and All-loving Father 
of human spirits, holding all worlds and beings in the 
perfect embrace of His gracious and sleepless provi- 
dence. 

Since matter, then, is but the materialized condition 
of an originally invisible and impalpable or ethereal sub- 
stance, it is capable of being transmuted by the chemis- 
try of life, through gradual steps of organic transforma- 
tion, into the invisible substance of living ethereal or- 
ganisms called spiritual bodies. And this is exactly 
what is perpetually taking place in all human organ- 
isms. The never-ceasing miracle of life, in the transfor- 
mation and etherealization of the cruder substances, is 
daily wrought before our eyes. "We see gross matter 
lifted step by step through organic transformation, from 
the crude conditions of rock, metal and earth, up to the 
refined substance of the human brain and body, the 
highest possible level on the strictly material plane. 

The process, however, as we know, does not stop here. 
Thought-substance and energy are evolved from the 
conditions of brain and nerve-life, capable of setting in 
motion powerful waves of ethereal vibration, which 
through mental concentration are made to effect specifi- 
cally the psychic states of other personalities. This in- 
dicates unmistakably the existence and activity of a 
psychic organism within, yet discrete from the physi- 
cal, corresponding to the plane of the ethereal medium 
within, but discrete from, the atmosphere of the physi- 
cal world. Such psychic action and results can be pred- 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 115 

icated only of psychic organisms operating in and up- 
on a corresponding ethereal medium. 

It is true that neither the scalpel nor microscope can 
disclose to sensuous vision this inner organism, because 
it is composed of invisible and impalpable substance, as 
much beyond or above the sphere of sensuous percep- 
tion and physical analysis as is the recognized ether 
upon which it acts. Nevertheless, it is as truly an ob- 
ject of perception and study through the opened psy- 
chic vision, as is the physical organism through external 
perception. 

A Spiritual Body. — This inner ethereal organism, be- 
cause of its invisible and impalpable nature, has been 
called by the seers a " spiritual body," in contrast with 
the physical, which is but its external counterpart and 
physical correspondence. Thus within, in vital relation 
and connection with, yet discrete from the physical 
organism, there is formed and operating a correspond- 
ing ethereal or spiritualized body, which survives the 
dissolution of the physical, its ethereal substance exist- 
ing above the plane of physical reaction and the law of 
physical decay. In the individualization and evolution 
of the human soul and body there is therefore involved 
a two-fold organism, the external and physical bearing 
a vital relation to the inner and spiritual, similar to that 
which the husk bears to the unfolding ear of corn it 
encloses, the inner organism being the essential and 
permanent one. The husk, during the period of corn 
formation, is vital and essential to the evolution and 
establishment of the ear, which could not take place 
without it 3 but when no longer needed for the perfec- 



116 THE OPEN DOOR. 

tion of the corn, it withers and falls away, while the corn 
itself, in its attained independent life, remains in the 
beauty and permanency of its organism. In like man- 
ner the physical organism is vital and essential to the 
formation and evolution of the spiritual body, as the per- 
manent embodiment and organic instrument of the soul. 

By the soul is here meant that combination of rational, 
moral and inspirational powers in man, which consti- 
tutes his self-conscious progressive personality, ami 
which being thus embodied in a permanent spiritual 
organism is indestructible and immortal. Hence, when 
the physical body has served its temporary purpose in 
the formation and maturing of the permanent spiritual 
organism, being no longer needed, its life is taken up 
by the real and permanent body and the physical falls 
away by dissolution, leaving the indestructible organ- 
ism of the soul in perfect freedom of action, entirely 
above and independent of the laws and conditions of the 
physical world. 

A Spiritual World.— The spirit world of each planet 
is also, in like manner, individualized and established 
in vital relations with the physical world, and in com 
plete ethereal and psychic correspondence thereto. 
Hence, with the dissolution or death of the physical 
body, the soul with its indestructible ethereal organism 
finds itself in a world of environment in complete cor- 
respondence with its own organic conditions. This is 
the inevitable destiny of every soul born into the world 
of self-conscious being, or in whom the self-conscious 
progressive personality is fully individualized and es 
tablished. 






THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 117 



The spirit world of each planet surrounds the physi- 
cal globe like a belt or zone of radiant etherealized mat- 
ter, which it practically is, its denser planes being inte- 
rior to and within the earth's atmosphere, while its more 
celestial regions stretch far beyond, yet embracing the 
earth and its terrestrial atmosphere with a sphere of 
spiritual light and celestial beauty infinitely transcend- 
ing all physical correspondence. This inner world of 
substantial and permanent realities, the home of the de- 
parted, is, be it remembered, as objective to the organic 
senses of its people as the outward world is to our phys- 
ical senses. 

Gradations of Life in the Spirit World.— While 
there are no arbitrary divisions of territory or society in 
that world of spiritual relations and conditions, circles or 
centres of social life are formed, by the supreme law of 
attraction, in infinite gradations of ascending orders, 
separated one from another only by discrete degrees of 
interior development and spiritual realization. The 
darker and more depraved spirits find their sphere of 
activity and association in the lower circles of spirit life, 
within the atmosphere and influence of earth, while the 
more exalted and spiritualized find their centres of action 
and society on the higher and brighter planes of celes- 
tial life and heavenly activities. 

As the external conditions of life and society in the 
spirit world are the exact counterparts or external ex- 
pressions of inward states, the environment of each 
centre of life and society is determined absolutely by its 
own moral conditions. Each individual on passing per- 
manently from earth, inevitably gravitates or rises, as 



118 THE OPEN DOOR. 

the case may be, to that centre or plane of life and society 
which answers to his own moral and affectional states, 
drawn there by the irresistible law of attraction. 

Members of the higher circles may, and continually do, 
voluntarily visit the lower spheres on errands of mercy 
and good-will in the blessed ministry of service, but those 
of the lower cannot, except under special conditions and 
by help from above, temporarily enter the spheres above 
them. They enter them permanently only as they rise 
through interior development to corresponding states. 
Infants, children, and all of every age who are not in 
a condition of personal responsibility on passing over, 
are taken in charge by benevolent associations of minis- 
tering spirits formed for this purpose, who have estab- 
lished nurseries, schools, and asylums appropriate to 
their work. 

The mighty spirits of the so-called dead, the hero souls 
of martyr ages, the vast and glorious throng of those who 
have lived and wrought and died for man on earth, still 
live, and with diviner love, tenderer sympathy, and 
augmented powers work for the spiritual emancipation, 
uplifting and transformation of humanity, whether on 
earth or in the prisons of selfishness and depravity in the 
land of souls. 

The conditions of the life beyond are thus briefly de- 
picted here for the light they throw on the question of 
reincarnation, in connection with the evolution and 
present existence of an indestructible spiritual organism 
within and vitally connected with the physical body. 

If asked by what authority these oracular statements 
are made concerning the spiritual body, the reality of 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 119 

ie spiritual spheres, and the conditions of the after- 

fe in the land of souls, we reply in the words of the 

[aster : " We speak that we do know and bear witness 

that we have seen." It is the testimony of indepen- 

lent seership, not of one only, but of many, to which 

rther reference will be made. 

It is not appealed to here, however, as authority in 
ly dogmatic sense, but is presented to the intuitive 
sason and practical common sense of the reader in con- 
rast with the speculations of the Orientals on the sub- 
let ; and also the vague, misty, uncertain and unnatural 
iews of theologians. 

Karma and the Future Life.— The true and perma- 
lent relations of man with God and with his fellow- 
beings are of a moral and spiritual character ; hence, the 
discipline of experience in and through these relations, 
by which his growth and development as a rational and 
moral being are secured, may be and are carried forward 
as perfectly under the new conditions of spirit life as 
they possibly can be in the physical body and the en- 
vironments of the outward world. 

With this understanding, the law of Karma, or conse- 
quence, does not, as will be readily seen, necessitate a re- 
embodiment in the physical, as the soul takes up its life 
and discipline in the spirit world exactly where it was 
laid down in this. Man may change his attitude toward 
God and toward man, here or there, but his essential 
relations with them are as indestructible as the nature 
of God and of the soul of man as His child. They re- 
main unbroken forever and unaffected by transition from 
one sphere to another. The changeless nature and 



120 THE OPEN DOOR. 

quenchless love of the Eternal Father for His children, in 
the infinite tenderness and exhaustless patience of His 
Being, renders any change of his attitude toward man 
an absolute and utter impossibility forever. 

A man's Karma, then, whether good or bad, is the 
result of his attitude and conduct toward God, his fellow- 
beings and his environment, under his organic relations 
to each. His adjustment to these relations as a rational 
and moral being, or of his attitude toward God in his 
relations with men and his environment, or any change 
of personal attitude under these relations, is as readily 
effected in his life in the spirit world as here. There is 
simply a change in his environment, but no change in 
his relation to environment, or toward man or God made 
by the transition. In whatever sphere of existence he 
must adjust himself to all his relations and find the 
freedom, harmony, and supremacy of his being through 
his unity with God in them, and in no other way. The 
Karma, or consequences of one attitude, as a rational, 
moral and spiritual being, ends with the change to an- 
other and opposite attitude, here or there. 

The physical world and the conditions of materiality 
are an undoubted necessity for the primary differentia- 
tion and embodiment of Spirit in self-conscious person- 
alities, a physical body being necessary for the evolution 
and perfection of a spiritual body, and the physical 
senses for the individualization and primary develop- 
ment of the soul's faculties. This once effected the real 
and permanent man is no longer an animal, or mere 
sensuous and physical being, but a spiritual organism, 
capable of sustaining organic relations with a correspond- 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 121 

ing spirit world and personal environment, independent 
of a physical body and its relations to the material world. 
Hence, as a spiritual being, a physical body and contact 
with matter, per se, is not a necessity to the higher educa- 
tion and development of the rational and moral powers, 
the conditions for this being fully supplied in the life 
beyond. There is, however, a decided advantage in a 
full rounded earthly experience and discipline in the 
primary school of the senses, as a preparation for a 
favorable entrance upon the life beyond. Too much 
stress or emphasis cannot therefore be laid upon the 
necessity of a high moral and spiritual attainment here, 
not only for the grand and possible achievement of a 
perfect life in the body, but a triumphant and glorified 
ascension to regions of celestial light and beauty in the 
land of souls. When this is not done here, the struggle 
must be continued and the personal victory achieved 
there as here, and under no more favorable conditions. 

The true ideal of development, or evolution of soul 
life in organic embodiment and expression, is the 
spiritual realization and supremacy of mind, and the 
corresponding etherealization or refinement and perfec- 
tion of organism as the instrument of its activities in 
relation to environment. This, in view of a spiritual 
body and a corresponding world of environment, rules 
out all need or desirability of repeated physical incarna- 
tions. 

The true understanding and cultivation of the spiritual 
nature and psychic powers, to which we are seeking to 
call the attention of aspiring and thinking souls, will, 
we repeat, bring the full demonstration of the truth 



122 THE OPEN DOOR. 

of this view. In the meantime, the ideal and method 
cannot be objected to as a working hypothesis, which, as 
such, is here offered in contrast both with that of Oriental 
Theosophy and modem Christian Theology. If true, its 
demonstration may be reached here and now, in the 
ordinary lifetime of our present embodiment, the condi- 
tions of the after life being open to the inspection of a 
properly developed independent seership. 

Translation versus Dissolution. — One word further 
on the possible abolition of the process of dissolution 
which we call death, by the higher process of translation 
taking its place. 

As physical substance is but the materialization of 
ethereal, or what may practically be called spiritual sub- 
stance, and returns from the plane of crude matter, 
through successive steps of organic transformation to 
the plane of etherealized or spiritual organisms, the 
time must come when the power of embodied spirit, 
through the higher unfolding of the spiritual conscious- 
ness and intelligence, and the corresponding higher 
chemistry of life under spiritual activity, may so ethereal- 
ize the physical body, dissolving and dispersing the 
grosser elements, that it shall pass — like the Christ-body 
— from the physical to the spiritual world without death 
or decay, by a glorious translation. This is the promise 
of all high prophecy. 

The transcendent chemistry of life transmutes, as we 
know, the crude elements of matter into all the infinite 
variety of texture which characterizes the structures of 
the vegetable and animal kingdoms. It has thus lifted 
the primates of the mineral world to the plane of ulti- 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 123 

mates in the human organism. It is sufficient, therefore, 
under the higher law of spiritual activity in the life of 
man, to still further transmute these elements into 
ethereal or spiritualized substance, and to appropriate 
this ethereal substance to the formation of a spiritual 
body within and in connection with the organic pro- 
cesses of the physical organism. Hence we say, that 
with the completion of the physical body in embryonic 
development, there is also the complete formation of a 
corresponding spiritual body pervading the substance 
and life of the physical, and in their organic develop- 
ment from infancy to manhood, both partaking of the 
same life, unfold and mature together. The intensify- 
ing of this process at the proper stage of maturity by a 
high degree of spiritual activity is all that is needed to 
effect the triumph of translation. 

The process of organic formation seemingly begins 
with the external body, yet, as in all life starting from a 
germ and organizing from within, the spiritual organ- 
ism is really first in the order of formation. It thus 
constitutes the actual pattern and law under which the 
physical body is constructed; the outward body being 
but the protective shield and vehicle for the process, 
like the husk to the corn. 

The Testimony of Seership. — "There is a natural 
body and there is a spiritual body," said the great 
Apostle, whose psychic vision had been opened to per- 
ceive the inner and permanent organism. This testi- 
mony of the apostolic seer is corroborated by the corre- 
sponding testimony of myriads of seers in different ages, 
many of whom were ignorant of what had been said by 



124 THE OPEN DOOR. 

others, making theirs an independent revelation. All 
these being in essential agreement, the fact is estab- 
lished, so far as the observation and concordant testi- 
mony of independent seership can establish anything of 
an occult nature. Occult seership in the past has 
mostly been of spontaneous development, but in the 
immediate future it will become a matter of specific 
study and culture ; then all that we have here so oracu- 
larly announced and claimed will be a matter of easy 
demonstration. 

Since, then, the physical body is but the temporary or- 
ganic shield, vehicle, and external counterpart of the real, 
permanent, and indestructible spiritual organism, and 
both are started, formed and evolved together, the dif- 
ficulties in the way of a spiritual organism, once separ- 
ated from its physical counterpart by death, becoming 
reincarnated through the embryonic process will be seen 
at once. It would be like saying that the matured ear of 
corn, from which the husk had withered and fallen away, 
might return and pass again through the process of evo- 
lution from the stalk through the husk, cob and milk to 
the full corn in the ear. "Were such a thing possible 
would it still be the same ear of corn ? The same ques- 
tion applies with equal force to the reincarnated man. 

Every living organism — plant, animal or man — is but 
the organic expression of the character and quality of its 
own embodied life ; hence, soul and body are of necessity 
the actual correspondences one of the other. How, then, 
can the organism of a nursing infant or stumbling child 
represent or be the expression of a reincarnated philoso- 
pher, statesman, etc., or become such a character only 



THE CHKIST D0CTKINE EPITOMIZED. 125 

as in his own soul and body he unfolds to it ■? Every 
child born into the world is brought forth in a twofold 
organism, which as such is the organic embodiment of a 
new-born soul, the physical body being but the means to 
the individualization and establishment of the perma- 
nent ethereal organism. 

The doctrine of reincarnation in the light of this law 
is as absurd and inconsistent with the nature of things 
and the laws of organic life, as is the theological doctrine 
of the physical resurrection of dead and decomposed bo- 
dies, and rests on the same basis ; a misconception of the 
nature and power of Spirit. It is an unverifiable specu- 
lation, as there are no possible means of a positive dem- 
onstration of its truth to us, even if it were true. The 
supposed memory of former incarnations is of too apoc- 
ryphal a character to be admitted as positive testimony, 
while the apparent reminiscences of decided experiences 
which are not the memory of anything that has occurred 
in the present existence is far more rationally accounted 
for on the basis of mediumship, or the sympathetic blend- 
ing of the personal sphere of one in the body with the 
sphere of one or more beings of the spirit world with 
whom the individual has been brought in mediumistic 
conjunction. 

A sensitive psychometrist may, by contact with some 
relic, be brought into sympathetic union, by retrospec- 
tion, with a prehistoric savage, and if not trained in tho 
understanding and use of his powers will become for the 
time so identified in thought and feeling with the earthly 
life of that early savage as not to distinguish himself 
therefrom. He may, indeed, as has been demonstrated 



126 THE OPEN DOOR. 

by experiment, become thus sympathetically identified 
with the actual life once lived by an animal of a former 
geological period. The strange reminiscences which 
may thus be awakened in many who possess, perhaps 
unconsciously to themselves, this marvellous psychome- 
tric susceptibility, either by contact with some connect- 
ing influence or mediumistic conjunction with the sphere 
of other personalities — in the body or out — is a much 
more satisfactory explanation than the supposed posi- 
tive memory of former incarnations. 

Astral Shells, etc. — The reincarnation theory is ob- 
jectionable again in that it raises more difficulties than 
it is capable of explaining. The Oriental conception and 
sevenfold division of the constitution of man, with the 
floating astral shells of denuded and divided souls re- 
posing in " Devachan," so necessary to the doctrine of 
reincarnation, is of too fanciful and arbitrary a formu- 
lation to satisfy anyone not fascinated by the meta- 
physical and speculative character of oriental philoso- 
phy. 

This, too, is an unverifiable theory, and not in accord 
with the most advanced steps of modern research in 
anthropology. The general scope or trend of Oriental 
speculation and teaching may perhaps be made to ap- 
pear consistent with the Pantheistic conception of 
Kature and life, but it cannot by any possible showing 
be made to harmonize with the Theism of Jesus. 

It is all right to claim Jesus as " a Theosophist," for 
he most assuredly was in the truest and fullest sense, 
but the doctrine of reincarnation and " astral shells " was 
not embraced in his Theosophy. His conception of the 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 127 

nature of God, and of man as the immediate child of 
God, and of the Father's house of many mansions in the 
life beyond, of the sympathy of the angels of God in 
heaven with men on earth and their joy over each re- 
pentant prodigal, of direct communication between 
Spirits and men as held by him and certain of his dis- 
ciples with Moses and Elias on the Mount of Trans- 
figuration, of the law of divine forgiveness, healing, and 
full, immediate restoration without expiation or medi- 
ation, through repentance and faith, leave no place 
for the doctrine of reincarnation, Devachan and Karma, 
as specifically taught and emphasized in the Oriental 
teaching. His conception of the infinite supremacy of 
Spirit, as a premise, is so vastly above the premise of 
the Eastern conception, that the whole line of induction 
concerning life, destiny, the nature and possibilities of 
the human soul, etc., must of necessity be carried for- 
ward on correspondingly different levels to their legiti- 
mate results, which also must correspondingly differ. 

The Christ Doctrine versus Modern Science. — There 
is nothing in the doctrine or teaching ascribed to Jesus 
that conflicts in the slightest degree with the positive 
demonstrations of modern science, save the doctrine of 
divine forgiveness and immediate healing, demonstrated 
by him, however, in facts of actual experience, if the 
record be true. The unexplored realm of spiritual life 
and law by positive experimental science as yet renders 
any scientific objection to this higher law altogether 
premature. On the other hand, so far as modern science 
has ventured in this direction, these higher results are 
actually foreshadowed, and there is absolutely nothing 



V2$ THE OPEN DOOR. 

in the economy of Nature, when interpreted by the law 
of evolution, at all antagonistic to the claim of Jesus in 
the whole trend of his teaching. If he was the true in- 
terpreter of God and man, of life and destiny, the truth 
of his gospel can be easily verified in universal experi- 
ence by the faithful following of his instruction and ex- 
ample, the application of the simple rule he has given : 
" If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the 
doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak from 
myself/' This cannot be said of the doctrine of reincar- 
nation and Karma. 

If we set out with the premise that there is no Su- 
preme Will to be studied and obeyed, and therefore no 
divine forgiveness or supreme power to overrule the law 
of Karma and restore, without expiation, then we have 
no basis for faith and effort in this direction. 

We claim that the rule given by the Master has never 
been fully and fairly applied on any large scale since 
Apostolic times, even by the Church that bears his 
name. A few despised and persecuted Mystics only, scat- 
tered through the centuries, have understood the simple 
law and realized its power. 

The law of divine love and forgiveness on repentance 
and faith, and the absolute power of Spirit to heal and 
reconstruct, without expiation or mediation, is as antag- 
onistic to the doctrine of vicarious atonement and sub- 
stituted righteousness, as to that of reincarnation and 
Karma. There has been, it is true, a form of repentance 
and faith insisted on by the church, but it has not been 
sufficiently comprehensive, or vital to the true interests 
of humanity, to secure the results promised by the Mas- 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 129 

ter, viz., the perfect life of spiritual illumination, free- 
dom, and supremacy on earth. The appeal has been to 
a false motive based upon a fictitious ideal. The motive 
presented for repentance has been escape from a right- 
eous retribution in the world to come, due to a life of 
self-indulgence and sin in this world. The basis of faith 
it has offered for this salvation in a future world has 
been the efficacy of the atoning blood of Christ as a sacri- 
ficial offering to God for the sins of the world, the sub- 
stituted merits of Christ's righteousness being imputed 
to the sinner on his acceptance of the blood atonement 
by faith. 

Faith in Christ as an official saviour standing between 
man and God, averting the execution of divine justice 
upon the sinner, by receiving the blow in his stead, has 
been preached and applied; but when or where has 
Christ been preached as a Model of the perfect life on 
earth, possible to all men as children of God ? When 
has the Master's own words been insisted upon as a 
basis of faith ; " Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that 
believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also ; 
and greater than these shall he do, because I go unto 
the Father." 

The Oriental doctrine of reincarnation and Karma, 
which admits of no forgiveness, but insists on expiation, 
and each soul working out its own Karma through re- 
peated incarnations — which absolute justice is supposed 
to demand and provide — is infinitely more consistent, 
humane and just, than the theological scheme of vicari- 
ous atonement and substituted righteousness. Both the 
Orientalist and the Western Christian, however, have, 
9 






130 THE OPEN DOOR. 

through misconception, missed the door of immediate 
emancipation and divine realization opened by the 
Christ in his doctrine of the Divine Supremacy and in- 
finite Fatherhood of God, and the corresponding trans- 
cendent nature and possibilities of man as His off- 
spring. It is this specific feature of the doctrine, 
method, and promise of Jesus which differentiates his 
teaching and standard from, and sets them in infinite 
contrast with all other teaching and Teachers of the 
world. 

The ideal, doctrine, and method of the Christ, are not 
the ideal, doctrine and method of the church called 
Christian in our modern world ; and the conventional 
teaching and practice of this church must not, therefore, 
be confounded with the Theosophy of the Christ, and 
its mighty promise to man, for which we plead. 

The Law of Consequence — Karma. — The Oriental 
Theosophist freely quotes the saying of a Christian 
Apostle, in confirmation of his interpretation of the law 
and doctrine of Karma in the non-forgiveness of sin. 
" Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap ; " 
but he does not follow out the deeper implication which 
these words involve, as more fully indicated in the con- 
text, viz. : the supreme power of Spirit — appropriated 
by faith — to overcome and emancipate from any and 
all conditions of bondage to materiality and sin. " Be 
not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatsoever a 
man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that sow- 
eth unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corrup- 
tion ; but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the 
Spirit reap eternal life. 5 ' Life on the plane of the 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 131 

Spirit is eternal in its supremacy and freedom, abso- 
lutely above the power of temptation, contagion or de- 
cay. Life on the plane of the senses is ephemeral, and, 
when not held under the higher law of the Spirit, is 
easily perverted, corrupted and destroyed. The spiritu- 
al life of divine supremacy and fellowship is the true 
life of the soul as the offspring of God who is Spirit, 
while the flesh and its senses are but the instruments of 
the soul in its external activities for the exercise of its 
legitimate supremacy and rightful power in and over the 
things and conditions of the outward world. The func- 
tions of the flesh and the strictly sensuous life, being 
temporary in their nature and duration, their perversions 
and corruptions are but temporary states and conditions, 
to be corrected and recovered from, by returning to correct 
habits and adopting remedial measures. The functions 
of the Spirit, on the other hand, being eternal and incor- 
ruptible, are absolute in their supremacy and power ; and, 
as man can live to and in the Spirit, as well as in the 
senses, he has here his true source of healing and re- 
covery both in bodily conditions and mental and moral 
states. If, then, a man ignores his relation to the Spirit, 
or forgets his true life as a spiritual being and child of 
God, and becomes absorbed in the things of the flesh and 
sensuous life, he is led to excessive indulgence and per- 
verted activities, and falls under bondage to the corrup- 
tions which follow. He has sown to the flesh and is 
reaping the fruits of his sowing. When, however, he 
discovers his mistake, and stops sowing to the flesh in 
seeking the things of the sensuous life as an end, and sows 
to the Spirit, that is, seeks divine fellowship and suprem- 



132 THE OPEN DOOR. 

acy, and becomes absorbed in the things pertaining to 
the kingdom of God, or truth and righteousness as an 
end, he comes at once under the reconstructing or regen- 
erating and renewing power of the Spirit which is abso- 
lute, and is lifted thereby into the freedom, supremacy, 
and divine fellowship of the spiritual life. 

And, again, when a man sows to the Spirit from the 
first, he will grow up under the spiritual law of the per- 
fect life, and, like the Christ-child, " increase in wisdom 
and stature and in favor with God and man," and at the 
normal season of organic maturity receive, as did the 
Christ, the full and permanent illumination of the Spirit, 
without at any time falling into sin or violation of the 
law of the perfect life. 

Repentance and Faith. — The words repentance and 
faith, as used by Jesus, did not signify that for which 
they are used in the conventional religious teaching. 
"When he said, " The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of 
God is at hand; repent ye and believe the Gospel," 
there was no thought of hell, damnation, or salvation in 
a future world in his message. The very " gospel " he 
proclaimed was the " good tidings of great joy which 
shall be to all people," foretold by the angels at his 
birth. It was the announcement and demonstration to 
man of his spiritual nature, divine sonship and transcen- 
dent possibilities as a child of God, and a call to the 
new and victorious life of divine fellowship and suprem- 
acy which this gospel and Theosophy opened to him 
through repentance and faith. " Repent ye and believe 
the gospel." The word repent is here used simply in 
the sense of turning about from going in one direction 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 133 

and taking the opposite course. A royal life of divine 
fellowship and achievement had been presented as pos- 
sible to all, a reproduction of the heavenly societies on 
earth from which should be banished sin and suffering- 
forever; and men were called to turn from their absorp- 
tion in things of the sensuous life as an end, and, rec- 
ognizing their transcendent privileges as spiritual be- 
ings, children of God, enter into their divine inheritance 
through loving loyalty to that supreme relationship, in 
the exercise of that perfect faith or confidence and trust 
in the Father's absolute supremacy, goodness, and provi- 
dence, which love alone inspires. "Have faith in God" — 
the infinite Wisdom, Goodness, Power and Providence — 
"and nothing shall be impossible to you." "Seek ye 
first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all 
things shall be added unto you," or shall be yours. 

Anthropomorphism. — Objection is felt by many to the 
emphasizing and cultivation of the personal sense of the 
Divine Fatherhood, lest we make of Him in our thought 
an anthropomorphic Being, or conceive of Him after the 
pattern of a man, if not in the human form, at least 
clothed with human attributes and passions as a Person- 
ality. 

In the Christ conception of God, however — in his Be- 
ing and Fatherhood — there is no anthropomorphism in- 
volved, in the sense of using man in any way as a pattern 
of his conception. Indeed, this process is exactly re- 
versed. It is an original and independent conception of 
God as universal and supreme Spirit, both immanent and 
transcendent in His relations to Nature and man. It is, 
again, a reconception of man as a spiritual being, because 



134 THE OPEN DOOK. 

a child of God, who is Spirit ; and instead of ideally 
clothing God with those forms of human attribute that 
involve a sense of limitation, it re-clothes humanity with 
the attributes of divinity, by restoring him, or awaken- 
ing him to a sense of his divine sonship. 

In place of holding the conception of God after the 
pattern of man, it holds the conception of man after the 
pattern of God, His offspring and image. It restores 
the Mosaic conception of the creation of man, God bring- 
ing forth man in His own image and after His own like- 
ness, which man must necessarily be, if a child of God. 

The doctrine of man's divine sonship and capacity for 
communion with and revelation from God, based upon 
the spiritual nature of both, eliminates all anthropo- 
morphic definitions and limitations, and opens the sense 
of the boundlessness of the Father's nature and kingdom, 
and the corresponding inherent boundless possibilities 
of man as His child. 

The Bearing of Demonstrative Science.— The progress 
of positive science will ere long confirm this testimony 
of spiritual intuition, and compel the universal recogni- 
tion of man as the immediate offspring of a transcendent 
Being of wisdom and goodness, because he is the only 
embodied self-conscious personal identity and progress- 
ive intelligence on our planet. Under the law of hered- 
ity, no preceding order of organic life could have be- 
stowed on him, or transmitted to him these transcend- 
ent endowments. 

The rational, moral, and inspirational powers which 
differentiate and distinguish man from the animal king- 
dom are not derived from the animal nature. They are 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 135 

the attributes of spiritual beings only, and their appear- 
ance was the birth and springing forth of a new king- 
dom upon our globe. They link and stamp man with 
divinity, and attest his spiritual origin, nature and des- 
tiny. 

The animal nature and life were a necessary matrix 
for the deposit and bringing forth to organic embodi- 
ment and supremacy these germinal attributes of a tran- 
scendent nature and life, as the mineral kingdom was to 
the vegetable world, but these high attributes were no 
more the direct offspring and product of the animal na- 
ture than the vegetable was of the mineral. Like be- 
gets like. The vegetable life begets only vegetable forms 
of life, and each seed or germ its own form, because they 
are vegetable germs. The same is true of the animal 
life. So when new and transcendent forms of life ap- 
peared above the animal, it was evidence of the bursting 
forth of the germs of a higher order and kingdom of life. 
All these germs of the rising orders of life were doubt- 
less deposited in the world life of the cosmic mass — by 
the differentiating act of Spirit — at an early stage of the 
world formation, when " the earth was without form, 
and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and 
the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," 
each to be brought forth in its own time and order — as 
conditions were prepared — in the mighty procession of 
the marching ages, in fulfilment of the purposes of Him 
" with whom one day is as a thousand years, and a thou- 
sand years as one day." 

As a stream can rise no higher than its source, this 
coming forth of consciousness, volition and spiritual as- 



136 THE OPEN DOCK. 

piration in man, as the culmination of the rising tide 
and unfolding- development or evolution of life in the or- 
ganic world, is, itself, evidence of a supreme and origi- 
nal Intelligence, Divine Consciousness, and Self-directing 
Power within, behind and above the processes of the 
world, from which only the self-conscious progressive in- 
telligence of man could proceed. 

Man's Place in Nature. — Since man is the ultimate of 
creation and the highest form of organic life possible to 
our planet, he must perforce take his place at the head 
of the organic world its rightful lord and sovereign. 

Standing with his feet upon its summit and his head 
among the stars, his psychic or soul powers are not held 
to the limitations of physical perception, but rise in 
their higher range of activity to acquaintance with the 
Cosmos, and fellowship with the immortals. Though 
the last to come forth, he stands first in position and im- 
portance, and, by virtue of his progressive nature he is 
to unfold and bring to perfection in his own being the 
supreme spiritual attributes of Life — wisdom, goodness, 
and power — and thus become God-like in attainment and 
character, " perfect even as the Father in heaven is per- 
fect." 

Since the constitution of the human soul is progres- 
sive in its nature and character, and the unfolding of its 
powers is but the organic evolution of germinal attri- 
butes of spiritual or absolute being, their integral devel- 
opment and training must and will give him final con- 
trol and actual mastery of all his physical, social, and 
moral conditions and environment. 

As the kingdoms below man and the entire world 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 137 

without are represented in him, when he has full control 
of the animal and physical in his own being, he will find 
himself in possession of the key to the mastery of the 
animal kingdom, and the rude forces and conditions of 
the world without. 

This mastery and high achievement of man as a spir- 
itual being and son of God must thus begin in the sphere 
of his own personal and organic life through obedience 
to the law of the Spirit in the life. He must be loyal to 
the divine nature and character of which he is the off- 
spring, if he would enter into its power, and personally 
realize the identification of his nature with it. 

The mastery of the external and physical is fully at- 
tained only through first securing the functional suprem- 
acy of the internal and spiritual. This gives illumina- 
tion and crowns man with intuitive wisdom which secures 
him against mistakes, the misuse of his powers, and any 
possible perversion of his high attainments. To realize 
this we have but to contemplate the life of the Model 
man, in whom a misuse or perversion of power would 
surely have been an impossibility. 

To effect these results and exalt the present life of 
mankind to the sublime heights of divine realization, by 
inducting them into their free-born inheritance, is the 
specific work and sublime mission of Christian Theos- 
ophy. And God said, " Let us make man in our image 
and after our likeness ; and let them have dominion over 
the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and 
over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every 
living thing that moveth upon the earth." 

The Mastery Itests with Man,— And God said, "Lei 



138 THE OPEN DOOR. 

them have dominion," etc. Having brought man forth 
in His own image and likeness and stamped him with 
the impress of His own nature, the eternal Father has 
thus bestowed on him the inherent power, with unlimited 
freedom to rise, through co-operation with the divine 
providence, to the divinest heights of possible being. 

God, having thus given to man as His child freedom 
of choice and volition in the whole sphere of his personal 
activities, cannot, without interfering with that freedom, 
lift him by His almighty power and goodness to that 
perfection of being in his own image and likeness which 
He has designed and provided for him, save through 
the consent and co-operation of man himself. Neverthe- 
less, in the normal evolution of the soul's powers the 
Father is ever giving Himself to His children, and seek- 
ing through their own consent and co-operation to repro- 
duce Himself in them. To the full extent, therefore, 
that they obey the promptings of their own higher or 
spiritual nature, the intuitions of the spirit which con- 
stitute His voice in the soul, does He work in and 
through them " both to will and to do of his good pleas- 
ure." 

It is through the inner and spiritual side of our being 
that we are rooted in the life of God, and that His nature 
and attributes are specialized in the faculties of the soul. 
We have, therefore, only to give the same attention and 
desire to the things which pertain to the kingdom of 
God and the inner life that we give to those of the out- 
ward world, and we shall perceive and understand them 
as clearly. 

The kingdom of God and the inner world, or spirit- 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 139 

ual side of all things, however, are opened to us only 
through the recognition and realization of the active 
Presence of God in the physical world, as revealed in 
the perfection of its economy and processes, in the func- 
tions of our own organisms, and the infinite wisdom in 
which all things are upheld and directed. But as God 
in the transcendency of His Being is more than the uni- 
verse in which He is thus revealed, if man as His child 
would partake in fulness of His "treasures of wisdom 
and knowledge," and of the beatitudes of His love and 
goodness, he must rise in the spiritual transcendency of 
his own being above the mere things of the objective 
world and hold direct communion and fellowship with 
the Father in Spirit and truth. 

Man can reach the spiritual supremacy of his own 
being in permanent realization, and through this the 
mastery of the outward world, only through his unity 
with the Father in the spirit of truth and righteousness. 
The experimental knowledge of truth, and the perfec- 
tion of a righteous life thus attained, is what secures to 
man the supremacy of his being, the freedom of the uni- 
verse, and the immunities, privileges and mastery of a 
true son of God. If then we live and act in harmony 
with the divine purpose in our own being, and in our re- 
lations with men, and the things of the world with which 
w r e have to deal, we are in unity with the Father's Spirit, 
and at one with Him in them. This is the true Beconcil- 
iation or At-one-ment of the New Testament. 

Function of Spiritual Insight. — The function of the 
spiritual nature or the exercise of the mind's powers on 
the spiritual plane is Intuition, or the unmistakable per- 



140 THE OPEN DOOR. 

ueption of truth and right, as the function of the sensu- 
ous nature, or the mind's action on the plane of the 
senses is physical perception or outward sight. 

The accuracy of external perception depends upon 
the clearness and perfection of physical sense, and the 
undivided attention to the thing perceived. In like 
manner the exercise of intuition depends upon the 
clearness and perfection of the spiritual sense, secured 
only through the undivided attention in supreme desire 
for the absolute truth and right. The personal equa- 
tion must be ruled out entirely. The truth and right 
for their own sake, in any matter, is the one thing 
needed, and the only thing that will secure absolute 
freedom and power to the soul ; this, therefore, should 
be the only thing desired and sought for. 

When the activities of the sensuous mind and the mo- 
tives of the self-seeking spirit are hushed to stillness, 
and the attention and active desire are wholly centred 
upon the spiritual sense of the matter, intuition will be 
heard in the deliverance of her infallible oracle, which 
is, we repeat, the unmistakable voice of God in the soul. 
It is this attitude only which opens the soul to the im- 
personal sphere of the Divine, and so to the immediate 
inspiration of God, in the unclouded light of which 
truth and right are clearly seen, and the unspoken and 
unwritten Word of the living God revealed. " If thine 
eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light." 

The Meeting-point of Man with God.— It will be help 
ful to remember and try to realize the stupendous fact 
that God meets and touches us individually, and holds 
personal relations with us, only in and through the func- 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 141 

tions and laws of our own being. These having been 
ordained of Him, the uses to which they are ordained 
constitute His will and purpose in us. When, therefore, 
in the exercise of the faculties and powers he has given 
us we direct their activity only to the ends for which 
they were given, we are fulfilling His will, and by this 
unity with Him, in them, we secure His unity with us in 
their activity, and so the accomplishment of the end de- 
sired. 

This immediate and intimate vital relation to God in 
the functions of our own being, in which our will can 
immediately co-operate with or antagonize His will, con- 
stitutes the spiritual plane of our activities, even in re- 
lation to external matters. "When this unity with God in 
our personal activities is perfect, we are prepared to 
enter into unity with and receive revelation from Him 
concerning all things pertaining to our state. This is 
the one preparation needed. It is the door through 
which we enter into the realization of our own spiritual 
being, and of its true relation to God, to man, and to Na- 
ture, and acquire specific intuitive knowledge also of 
the true nature of anything desirable or useful. We are 
thus enabled to enter into and know the soul of things 
by a penetrative mental sympathy through this unity 
with God in them. 

It is not, therefore, through intellectual development 
and effort under the impulsion of self-will that man is 
to attain the freedom and supremacy of his being and 
the mastery of the world. It is only through the recog- 
nition of the Divine wisdom and supremacy, and seeking 
unity of will and purpose with the Father that he can 



J 4:2 THE OPEN DOOR, 

find his true freedom and receive the unfailing power 
for divine achievement. As a child of God he should 
and must be a co-worker with the Father. 

TThen man seeks to adjust himself to the known laws 
of the physical world he is really seeking to know and 
do the will of God in those relations, since these laws 
are the manifestation of that will. The Christ simply 
applied this principle to the higher moral and spiritual 
relations of man recognized by him. 

The Natural and the Spiritual Man.—" God is Spirit : " 
and as such the immediate Father of human spirits. 
Man by virtue of his divine sonship and spiritual heredity 
is, of necessity, in his essential nature and constitution, a 
spiritual being in his embodiment, here and now. As 
such, he is indestructible and immortal in his personality 
and consciousness, holding potentially within him from 
the very beginning of his personality the possibilities 
of divine perfection. 

The " spiritual birth " referred to by Jesus as a neces- 
sity to an experimental knowledge of God and His king- 
dom, and the realization of this perfection of being in 
relation thereto, is not, therefore, the birth of a new nat- 
ure in man, but the birth or awakening of a new con- 
sciousness. It is the awakening to the mental recog- 
nition and personal realization of the spiritual nat- 
ure and capacity already his, and bringing forth to or- 
ganic activity its latent power of love, inspiration, en- 
thusiasm and service. He has therefore but to arouse 
himself to the full recognition and realization of his 
spiritual nature and divine sonship, to enter into the 
supremacy of the spiritual life and realize its power over 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 143 

flesh and sense, and over all his material relations and 
conditions. 

The man who lives wholly in the sense-consciousness, 
not yet awakened to the recognition and realization of 
his inner spiritual life, relations and possibilities, is the 
" natural man " of Scripture, the child of nature, know- 
ing only his relations to the outward world through the 
senses. 

The man awakened to the realization of his higher 
nature and divine relationship, and alive in the spirit 
of loyalty and devotion to the transcendent life of spirit- 
ual freedom and achievement thus open to him, is the 
"spiritual man" of Scripture. 

This awakening and consecration to the higher life of 
the spirit, is the " New Birth " of the Christ teaching, 
through which man, realizing the divinity and royalty 
of his nature as a child of God, rises in loyalty to that 
nature and asserts and achieves his rightful supremacy 
and freedom. It is the birth of a supreme desire for 
God and the higher wisdom and intense love of truth 
and righteousness which enkindles a lofty enthusiasm 
for humanity, the aspiration for high achievement, and 
a corresponding inspiration to self-sacrificing deeds of 
heroism in the divine ministry of service. It is the 
spiritual emancipation, uplifting and transfiguration of 
humanity, because it brings flesh, sense, and all the ac- 
tivities of mind and body in subordination to and co- 
ordination with the spiritual nature in its rightful su- 
premacy, and thus under the law and inspirations of the 
spiritual life, which, we repeat, are love, good-will and 
sympathy toward all. 



144 THE OPEN DOOR. 

Under this law, and the ruling ideal of the perfect life 
of a son of God, the entire being becomes regenerated, 
and the organism itself reconstructed and transformed 
after the perfect pattern of the new ideal, and thus made 
its complete embodiment and organic expression. " The 
Word" is " made flesh," the divine ideal actualized, the 
divine will and purpose fulfilled in man as the child 
of God ; and the Christ's work completed. " Ye there- 
fore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is per- 
feet." 

The Illumination which Follows. — The spiritual man 
is an inspired and illuminated man. Through his con- 
formity with the law of the Spirit in his life he has 
opened himself to immediate inspiration from the 
sphere of the Divine, and his intuition acts under the 
direct inshining light of the Divine Omniscience. He 
realizes the fulfilment of the divine promise, " I will in- 
struct thee and teach thee in the way which thou 
shalt go : I will guide thee with mine eye," the eye of 
Omniscience. 

The deeper secrets of the world and the laws of oc- 
cult mastery can be grasped by man only through the 
active supremacy, inspiration, and illuminated intuition 
of his spiritual nature. 

The co-ordination of the outward w T ith the inward life, 
the senses with spiritual intuition and inspiration, 
brings all under the law of the spirit in the life, and the 
outward and the inward become one luminous man. 

The intellectual and artistic powers, by taking on an 
intuitive and inspirational action under spiritual illumi- 
nation, are enabled to interpret correctly the testimony 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 145 

of the senses and use them with an accuracy impossible 
of attainment without this inward illumination. 

More than this, however, in the full attainment of spir- 
itual supremacy and illumination the mind's powers are 
no longer held to the limited sphere of the five physical 
senses and the external method of experimental research. 
They are then, as previously shown, readily opened on 
the inner and psychic plane, by which they gain a sweep 
of inner penetration, analytic perception and psychic 
vision, which embraces the entire occult side of all things 
that come within the sphere of personal interest and at- 
tention ; for as the Master said : " There is nothing cov- 
ered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not 
be known. " 

Through this opening and activity of the higher psy- 
chic powers in a soul, attuned to the harmony of being 
through conscious unity of will and spirit with the 
Father, they are made the permanent " gifts of the 
Spirit " under divine illumination, which confer on their 
possessor that supreme power of mastery and achieve- 
ment attained by Jesus and to a high degree by the 
Apostles. 

Why, indeed, should it not be so ? The sustaining 
power of the mind's faculties, and of the soul itself in its 
entirety of being and personality, is the indwelling life 
of God. Within and behind that life, in the infinite 
depths and inexhaustible resources of His eternal and 
changeless nature, is the enthroned Being of God. It is 
through this Deific Essence and centre of man's being 
that he and his faculties are securely anchored in Su- 
preme Spirit, and which makes the soul a living temple 
10 



146 THE OPEN DOOR. 

of God. It is this inner and indestructible Eeality which 
constitutes the Shekinah of the Divine Presence, the 
Holy of Holies in the human soul. It is this inmost 
.spiritual life of the soul, and of every faculty of the soul, 
which constitutes the potential germs of the Divine na- 
ture and attributes, and gives to man his spiritual con- 
stitution and indestructible personality, with infinite 
possibilities of development and divine realization. 

Through the awakening and springing forth in the 
souPs faculties (spiritual birth) of this indwelling spirit- 
ual life and germinal divinity, man in the functions of 
his being is opened to the limitless depths of the Fa- 
ther's spirit, and from the heights of infinite Being there 
streams into his soul the illumination of the, to him, 
ever-brightening effulgence of the Divine Omniscience 
and the ever-deepening inspiration of the Infinite Love. 

If we attempt to open, cultivate, and exercise the 
psychic powers without the recognition of and depend- 
ence upon Divine Inspiration and guidance, we are liable, 
as before intimated, to self-deception through the bias 
of the self-seeking spirit and perversity of self-will, the 
subjective desires becoming, through self-hypnotization, 
the apparent objective reality of the psychic percep- 
tion. 

And, again, without turning directly to the inmost 
and divine centre of our being, for the immediate light 
of Divine inspiration and communion, by which we are 
held self-centred in the divine law and positiveness of 
truth and right, we are liable to become open to the in- 
trusive wills and thoughts of other personalities in more 
or less sympathy with our own desires, and so accept 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 147 

the vagaries of a partial and unreliable mediumship for 
the intuitions and inspirations of truth. 

Without opening ourselves to immediate influx from 
the sphere of the divine, the psychic powers will not 
become the reliable and permanent gifts of the Spirit, 
and will be liable to perversion and unsatisfactory re- 
sults under the insistence of self-will. Those only who 
will, to do His will, are assured of the certain knowledge 
of the truth, because God is found only in the truth and 
right of all things, and truth and right are the revela- 
tions of Him. 

Law of Health and Healing. — The life that is in us 
is the Effluence of God springing from the fount of ex- 
haustless Being and infinite perfection. The law of that 
life is, therefore, perfect, and will outwork perfect re- 
sults when not interrupted by our own false habits and 
perverted activities of mind and body. If we recognize 
and trust it as divine and perfect, and put ourselves in 
unity with the will and purpose of God in it, it will give 
us a perfect body, keep it in perfect health, and when, 
through folly, ignorance, or injury it becomes diseased 
will, through a return to this co-operation, immediately 
heal and restore it. The indulgence of fear, despond- 
ency, anxiety, etc., are attitudes and states of mind in 
antagonism to the will and purpose of God in our life, 
which are health and healing. If we become the victim 
of some pernicious and enslaving habit, the return, 
through repentance and faith, to the right attitude of 
soul toward God in the life will bring immediate eman- 
cipation, healing and restoration. Immediate healing 
and perfect restoration should be always expected, save 






148 THE OPEN DOOR. 

where the injury is so great that separation from the 
body is the only legitimate release.* 

Where it is difficult and perhaps seemingly impossi- 
ble for one in bondage to thus, unaided and alone, read- 
just himself and assume the correct attitude toward God 
for this result, it can be readily and surely effected by 
the union of one or more with and for him in associative 
effort. 

The power of united prayer, which brings men into unity 
with God and with each other, and God with them in that 
unity, is omnipotent. " Again I say unto you, that if two 
of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they 
shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father who is 
in heaven." " In union there is strength." It creates or 
supplies an atmosphere, so to speak, in which the weak- 
ness of the individual is replaced by the combined power 
and moral support of those who are thus one with him in 
sympathy and effort. 

Through this unity of two or more in mutual helpful- 
ness and associative effort, for the realization of God in 
personal experience and the achievement of some benefi- 
cent result, they necessarily come into unity with God, 
who is the bond and power of all unity, and secure the 
working of His almighty power to the accomplishment 
of the end desired. " They also come into unity with 
the mighty Brotherhood of the perfect life, represented 
in the Christ, and thus under the immediate co-opera- 
tive influence of a divine and helpful ministry. " For 



* For a full and specific application of the law of Mental and Faith Healing 
see author's large work, " The Way, Truth, and Life/' 



THE CHRIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 149 

where two or three are gathered together in my name, 
there am I in the midst of them." We have an encour- 
aging confirmation of this truth and the fulfilment of the 
promise in that marvellous Apostolic jexperience at Pen- 
tecost, and in many a Pentecostal baptism in the ex- 
perience of the faithful who have followed the Master's 
instruction.* 

Law and Basis of Faith, — "We may not yet understand 
or comprehend the Being of Him in whom we live and 
move and have our being ; but we may at once feel and 
enter into His power, we may have the immediate in- 
spiration and guidance of His wisdom, we may recipro- 
cate His love and realize His goodness, and thus demon- 
strate His perfect providence in personal experience 
here and now. 

If, then, we realize that God in His essential Being is 
intrenched, and, when acknowledged, enthroned in our 
inmost life, awaiting only our co-operation in unity of 
spirit and will for the working out and realization of 
His perfect Ideal in us, and if we realize further that 
without this acknowledgment and co-operation, or by 
the indulgence of doubt, fear, and the positive antagonism 
of self-will, we shut out His help and prevent this di- 
vine realization, we can readily see that the responsibil- 
ity and results rest entirely with ourselves. 

The results will correspond with our recognition, de- 
sire and faith on the one hand, or ignorance, doubt, fear 
and the antagonism of self-will on the other. We limit 

* For full instruction in the formation and exercises of groups for spiritual 
realization and attainment of spiritual gifts, see u Pathway of the Spirit," by 
the author. 



150 THE OPEN DOOR. 

the divine activity in the functions of our life by our 
doubts, fears and self-will, and open ourselves to, and 
call it forth in its fulness by desire and the appropriat- 
ing act of faith. 

We must act in the realizing sense that the ability to 
achieve, in His name and strength, any worthy end, or to 
reach any legitimate attainment, is already ours by the 
using. 

We should never forget that the spirit within us is 
potential with the very nature of God, to be evoked and 
called forth in the functions of our being by the concen- 
tration of supreme desire and the appropriating act of 
faith, which this understanding and loyalty of purpose 
enables us to do. 

Whether it be for the illumination of the mind, the en- 
lightenment of the moral sense, the healing of the body, 
or the clothing of our whole being with a superhuman 
energy for some extraordinary emergency or unusual 
work, the needed supply in the spirit is ever at our 
command. 

Let it then be burned into the consciousness and mem- 
ory, never to be effaced, that the central life and inherent 
power of our every faculty is spirit, that spirit is so 
much of the nature of God in us, and that as every func- 
tion and power of our being has its roots in the spirit, it 
may and should take on a divine activity. Whatever 
God does for us, therefore, in a personal sense He must 
do by the activities of His Spirit in and through the 
functions of our personal life, not alone through our 
willing consent, but active co-operation. Realizing this, 
we shall not look out and away for a far-off God, nor sit 



THE CHEIST DOCTRINE EPITOMIZED. 151 

idly waiting for His answer to our prayers in a mirac- 
ulous interference from without ; but, turning* within; 
shall find Him at the centre of our being, enthroned in our 
inmost life, an indwelling God, and, in the loving loyalty 
of a child in unity with the Father, claim, receive and 
appropriate the blessing that we need. In the bosom of 
the Eternal Goodness and Providence that blessing has 
been and will remain ours forever. Why then delay its 
appropriation ? 

And Jesus answering saith unto them, " Have faith in 
God: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith and 
doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the 
fig-tree, but whosoever shall say unto this mountain, 
Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and 
shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those 
things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have 
whatsoever he saith. And all things, whatsoever he 
shall ask in prayer, believing [expecting], ye shall re- 
ceive. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye 
desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and 
ye shall have them." 



APPENDIX. 



The following extracts from letters are presented as samples of the 
unsolicited testimony received from numerous readers of the two issues 
of the "Christian Theosophy Series," "The Way, the Truth and 
the Life," and " The Pathway of the Spirit," to show the help which 
this interpretation of the Christ has been to many ; and as an encour- 
agement to others still needing some strong word of assurance and 
help : 

December 29, 1890. 

Dear Doctor Dewey : Your beautiful book, " The Way, the 
Truth and the Life," has been a revelation to me. It has come into 
my life as a special message from the Good Father, in response to my 
long and earnest desire to better understand some vital points of His 
great Truth. 

For more than twenty years I have tried, from a sense of duty, to 
believe in the method of redemption, as taught by various churches, 
but reason has persistently refused to be convinced. 

A new light has been thrown on the meaning of Christ's life on 
earth. I can now see to what heights of grandeur human life may 
attain, that the Kingdom of God may yet reign on earth when all shall 
follow gladly the great Teacher (not because He was substituted for 
us, but because His was the perfect life, as ours may also become per- 
fect). 

I never before realized the divine possibilities within reach of " poor 
human beings. v 

Who need be poor, when he can, of his own free-will, become rich 
in the wisdom and power of the Spirit ; a master over sin and disease, 
and an accepted heir of the Kingdom of Heaven ? 

You have been to me an interpreter of the mystery of life and 



154 APPENDIX. 

death ; the latter has lost most of its terrors, and the former is now 
worth living ; there is so much that may be accomplished. 

Yours truly, 



July 24, 1890. 

Dr. J. H. Dewey : My dear Sir and Brother— It is just two years 
since I received your precious book, " The Way, the Truth and the 
Life. " During that time I have read it through several times. I am 
now feeding my hungry soul on its divine elements again. 

Every time I take it up I feel stronger in mind and body for hav- 
ing read it, and it seems so complete, or covers the ground so well, 
that I cannot see what you can say further upon the subject that will 
add to its value or make the subject plainer to the apprehension of the 
reader. 



I have grown in stature and strength, or the understanding of the 
glorious theme of } r our book during the past two years of study. 

At first it was only to me a beautiful il mirage " or dream ; but it 
is beginning to take on organic form in my life. When I commenced 
reading I was broken in health and spirit, and felt myself a hopeless 
case, in the sense of ever being able to realize a small fraction of what 
I considered your " Beautiful Dream." 

I had a hernia since my youth, that is gone. I had bronchial ca- 
tarrh, that is fast disappearing. 

I had a bladder and kidney trouble that used to lay me up often. I 
have but little trouble in that way, now ; and I am beginning to real- 
ize the blessed truth, "He forgiveth all thy iniquities, he healeth all 
thy diseases, he redeemeth thy soul from destruction." 

. • • . . • . . 

May the good Lord bless you in your work, and open the way for 
the coming of His Kingdom upon this benighted earth, is the prayer 
of your brother in the Lord. 

(Rev.) . 



APPENDIX. 155 

November 17, 1890. 

Dr. J. H. Dewey : Dear Sir— Will you kindly inform me if you 
could furnish a copy of your cl Christian Theosophy v in uncut edges? 
I also desire to ask if you could supply a few copies of the work at a 
reduced price for distribution ? 

I borrowed your book simply to read the account of that family as 
given in your appendix, but read the entire work. Being profoundly 
impressed by it, I requested the loan of it for a very literary but scep- 
tical friend, whose life has been entirely changed by it. I doubt not 
your attention has been called to numerous cases of the kind, but cer- 
tainly none could be more marked nor more interesting in its details. 

I am desirous of putting the book into as many hands as possible, 
and I believe I could place it where it would do great good. I have 
already bought two copies here for distribution, and desire the little 
pamphlets for the same purpose. 

Awaiting your reply, I am, 

Yours, very truly, 



November 20, 1890. 

Dr. J. H. Dewey : Dear Sir — Having read your book, " The Way, 
the Truth and the Life," in which I have felt a deep interest, and 
which has greatly increased the wish in my mind to gain a fuller 
knowledge of the most important subject that can engage the human 
mind. 

I may tell you that I am anxious to know if you have established a 
school in America for the furtherance of your interpretation of the 
New Testament, and for the furtherance of the at present hidden 
knowledge of the statements of the Christ. 

For years past I have had the impression that there is something 
deeper and more practical in the words of Christ than is at present 
taught in " the Churches." 

I am anxious to live in future and to act in co-operation with the 
will of God, "who worketh in me both to will and to do his Good 
Pleasure." And so if you have established a school I shall feel much 
obliged if you will let me know the lines on which it is run, and also 
if there is room in your school for any who might apply for admission 



156 APPENDIX. 

from this country. ... I may say if your report is favorable, I 
shall go to America in the near future. 

I am dear sir, yours truly, 
Address : 



-, Australia. 



December 15, 1890. 
J. H. Dewey, M.D. : Dear Sir and Brother— Through the kindness 

of my friend, Mrs. , I have been permitted to read " Pathway 

of the Spirit.' ' Nothing I have ever perused has given me such an 
uplift into the Kingdom of our Lord, and my spirit hungers for more. 
Will you kindly send me a list of your publications with the prices 
thereof, in paper and cloth, as I desire to possess them, and take this 
method to discover where I had best remit. . . . 

Fraternally yours, 



CHRISTIAN THEOSOPHY SERIES. 

A New and Original Series of Books Designed to Unfold and 
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whole are based. 

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Tlbe perfect TIQag, By Anna (Bonus) Kingsford and 

Edward Maitland 

From the preface to the French edition in L'Aurore, a. Paris 
monthly magazine of Esoteric Christianity, under the direction 
of the Countess of Caithness and Duchesse de Pomar. 

**The scientific and literary qualities of this book place it among works of 
the highest order in the hermetic (interpretative) literature of the present time. 
It responds in large measure to the imperious need of our age, being at once a 
comprehensive synthesis of the past and reconstruction of the future. Its 
originality consists in its exposition in the plain language of modern philoso- 
phy, or ideas heretofore enveloped in strange symbols or obscure formulas. 
The Christ disclosed to us by it is not the historic, but the ideal and symbolic 
Christ, the perfect Initiate, or Son of Man become Son of God, whom every 
man should endeavor to realize in himself by means of the development of his 
highest faculties. * * * * The work is executed with as great brilliancy as 
solidity. A lofty inspiration and a profound intuition, combined with great 
reasoning power ; the scientific spirit and knowledge of natural science ; a seri- 
ous study of the Bible and of the Fathers of the Church; great discernment in 
the interpretation of symbols ; and finally, a profound experience of occult phe- 
nomenon, with the coolness and judgment necessary to [determine their relative 
values, and distinguish reality from illusion : — such are the rare qualities which 
make the exceptional merit of this work, and which have enabled its authors to 
produce one of the most excellent scientific expositions of secret doctrine 
known to us, and an account of initiation admirable for its logic and lucidity. 

May the translation of this book minister to the diffusion of Esoteric 
Christianity, of that universal religion which is destined to restore to the 
sciences their organic unity, to the arts their lost ideal, to distracted humanity 
its equilibrium, to the human soul its lost country, to earthly life its divine 
aspiration and hope. 

Edouakd Schure." 
cloth, gilt, $i.co. paper cover, 50 cents. 



UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY PUBLISHERS, N. Y. 



ONE LIFE, ONE LAW. 

By Mrs. Myron Reed. i2mo., cloth, gilt top, $1.25. 



THE argument of this book is that Life is One, whether mani- 
fested through nature as Force or Energy; or revealed in 
consciousness, and known as God, has been claimed by 
religion and science that this power, by whatever-name called, works 
everywhere and always according to fixed law. 

Science makes no claim that it cannot prove. Religion has 
claimed all, and proved in part ; it must stand side by side with 
science, and prove as it claims. 

Unity of life suggests unity of law, and one is found to be a 
logical sequence of the other. 

Proof depends on openness to conviction, and conviction depends 
upon obedience to truth already received. The experience of Job 
is an illustration of the law of overcoming. 
The book closes with a chapter on Prayer. 

This is a thoroughly spiritual work conceived and written in a 
devout as well as philosophic spirit. Mrs. Reed's book is thoughtful 
and suggestive and it is characterized by an elevated tone and fine 
spirit. — Religio Philos. Journal, 

A title so simple and a dedication so universal, naturally 
challenges attention. 

It might serve a fitting key to Christian Science without getting 
up the claim. It is, however, a conclusive argument to prove we do 
not pray in vain, " Thy Kingdom Come." — National View, Wash- 
ington, D. C. 

It is a helpful formative book, going over great heights some- 
what rapidly, but all the time rational. — New Jerusalem Magazine. 

This is in some respects the best we have seen among the multi- 
tude of books that have lately appeared emphasizing the power of 
the spirit. A helpful, healthful, uplifting work that will be read with 
interest even by those who may not accept as true its every state- 
ment. — New Christianity, Philadelphia. 

This beautiful little book, just issued, is from the pen of a rarely 
spiritual and highly cultivated woman. The book is fitly dedicated 
41 To all seekers after God," and we are sure that all such seekers 
will prize this book. But the book needs to be read, reread, studied, 
digested, made a part of one's life, by an understanding of the one 
law which it proclaims, in order to be appreciated. — International 
Magazine of Truth , August 15. 

It is a thoughtful book well written.— The Philanthropist. 
Send for Catalogue and List of Occult and Theosophical books to 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY, 

SUCCESSORS TO 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY, 

P. o. box 1902. 142 TO 160 WORTH STREET NEW YORK. 



LRB D ?9 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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